If Looks Could Kill - Graphic Art & Design

“A process at the interface of the medical discipline of anatomy and modern polymer chemistry, Plastination makes it possible to preserve individual tissues and organs that have been removed from the body of the deceased as well as the entire body itself”

The Bodyworlds exhibit was unreal, spectacular!

Points of Interest:

• Organs look much smaller plastinated than when soaking in formalin.
• Everything is so fibrous - Tissue, muscle, tendons, even bones - they look like coral, with tiny pockets when processed this way
• No ghostly activity, which I was hoping for, considering all of the deceased present. ;)
• I found the Horse the most compelling out of all. Magnificent creature.

A very sterile installation, all of the souls seem to have long since departed. Logically, if there were to be ghosties, it would center around an area or individual, instead of the body left behind.

Which raises another point, made more readily apparent by this exhibit, that the spark that makes you, you, lies in the energy of the being. How the skin hangs on our bones, how it’s weathered, how we decorate it, the tension in one’s muscles that shape the flesh - the exact same thing that’s missing from CGI - that which departs when we do.

We saw it in Dallas, thanks to Angel of Malevolence! :D Be sure to listen to her station, Redemption Radio where she serves up metal just for you, Ren, for yooou.

This is one of the most intense images I have seen, a mummified woman cowering and covering her face, contorted in terror over whatever she faced 600 years ago. Also, a mummified baby discovered at the same site reminds me of the styling for Tool’s Sober video.

Both are to be on display at the Museum of the Nation in Lima, Peru.

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This infuriates me. Livid. What makes it worse, is that it’s in the North Texas area where I am ashamed to live.

The trigger? A 5th grade student on a field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art saw *gasp* a nude sculpture.

One parent complained.

You have to ask yourself where we are headed as a nation. The parents authorized the field trip via permission slips. We see violence everywhere around us and ppl are soiling their undies over uncovered sculptural flesh?!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m down with brutal lowbrow media too, but comparitively speaking on the ol’ pants-shittin’-meter… I see no cause for alarm, other than the heightened level of denial and repression we’re passing onto our kids.

I would love to see a study correlating geographic areas, educational levels, sexual openess vs. the level of violent or sexual crimes in the more ignorant repressed areas. I’m particularly interested in Europe’s statistics, where flesh is not a source of guilt and shame - I imagine the figures would be lower.

This pleases me, as I really love Edvard Munch’s work.

Edvard Munch’s paintings “The Scream” and “Madonna,” which two armed robbers yanked from the wall of a museum here in August 2004, were recovered in relatively good condition in Norway today.

I cannot comprehend the logic (or the logistics) involved, in profiting from something that high-profile. It would have to be sold to a private collector, were they to profit from it in any way. In turn, the collector could share it with no one, lest he be found out and turned in for the $325,000 reward.

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I cannot wait until the new Dali museum is complete in 2010, to:

A) See more of his work in person (It IS different seeing art in person, it’s far more vivid with more detail than a print can capture!)

The new Dali museum will be more than a bunker, Mr. Hine said. And like its eponym, it will be both practical and eccentric. Preliminary designs call for a tree breaking through one exterior wall, a water fountain shooting from another and a skylight protruding from the roof like a glowing loaf of bread.

Mr. Hine said the fountain will do something surprising.

“Maybe there will be pumps that are able to spurt out water that will spell out Dali in the air,” he said. “Or it may dribble in an obscene way. We don’t know. It will definitely get people wet because it will do something unpredictable.”

… and B) to see what that fountain’s up to!

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