naked figure stands with its arms held high in the air, a ballerina with no skin. Its bicep muscles are outstretched like pink tendrils up toward its ears. The extended pose doesn’t seem to bother this body, however. It’s a masterpiece of art and science.


It is also not the only one. At Body Worlds &


The Story of the Heart – an exhibition currently staged in a converted warehouse in Berlin,


Germany – dozens of anonymous humans have been “plastinated,” a process invented by “controversial German anatomist” (as Wikipedia calls him) Dr. Gunther von Hagens, in which the biological tissue is preserved and put on display. The 66-year-old scientist – whose dark-ringed, beady blue eyes, deep


stare and trademark black fedora give him more the look of a screen villain or grave digger – may slice skulls like Da Vinci, polish eyeballs like Picasso and warp muscular bodies into extraordinary athletic poses like Egon Schiele, but don’t go calling him an artist. “First of all, I am a medical doctor and consider myself a scientist, not an


artist,” he tells Rue Morgue in an exclusive email interview. “At the most, my work could be seen as anatomy art, what I define as the aesthetic di- dactic presentation of the body interior.” Born in Skalmierzyce, Poland, von Hagens settled in Germany, receiving


a doctorate from the University of Heidelberg in 1975 before working as a medical lecturer at its anatomical and pathological institutes for more than twenty years. It was there, in 1977, that he invented plastination, though his Institute for Plastination wouldn’t be founded until 1993. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that the first humans underwent the process, with each one taking over 1500 hours to complete. Today, more than 32 million wide-eyed and gasping people throughout


Taiwan, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, the US and Canada have borne witness to the roughly 200 instances of preserved humans (including preg- nant women), horses, elephants and gorillas that make up each of the many incarnations of the touring Body Worlds exhibit (for more, see RM#51). The skinless specimens, which appear either whole or in part (sometimes show- casing one or more diseased organs), are anything but typical anatomical fare. Splashes of imagination in their arrangement – not to mention the re- curring realization that the individuals in question were once living, breathing people – elevate each piece beyond its formal, structured presentation. “Plastinates, like works of art, are bestowed with an aesthetic effect and


an emotional value,” says von Hagens, adding that 68% of visitors to the exhibits leave with valuable incentives for a healthier lifestyle (some are


noted to drink and smoke less). “The authenticity of the specimens partic- ularly contributes to the fascination of the exhibition. Especially in today’s media world, where citizens increasingly receive indirect information, the individual is very well aware that the copy is always mentally ‘pre-digested’ and therefore is an interpretation. In this respect, Body Worlds satisfies peo- ple’s great yearning for pure originality.” For example, 2006’s The Archer has a woman posed with a bow, her arm


muscles visibly stretched, her skull sliced open in three separate places and her brain balancing on top of her head. In a piece from 2000 called Muscle Man With Skeleton And Child, a hunchbacked youngster with elfish ears holds onto one of its parents’ blood-red hands while the other caregiver has been completely stripped of muscle and tissue. And the glass-encased Athlete is in the midst of a track and field race, jumping over a hurdle with a perfectly arrow-pointed erection (the source of his excitement unclear, though maybe it’s us). Predictably, von Hagens’ work has elicited some strong reactions. While


he notes that Body Worlds’ admission fee of roughly $20 US per person funds ongoing research and development “primarily in the field of healthy and diseased topographic anatomy,” his exhibits and the plastination process itself have long been frowned upon by the Catholic Church and nu- merous Jewish rabbis who object to the display of human remains. Despite the controversy, von Hagens performed the first public autopsy in 170 years to a sold-out theatre crowd in the UK back in 2002 – a criminal act according to Her Majesty’s Inspector of Anatomy. Though police showed up, no charges were laid. As always, von Ha- gens sported his trade- mark fedora – just like the anatomist slicing open his patient in the 1632 oil painting by Rembrandt that


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