Comparative Cultural Analysis
Master Thesis
To Remember and to Forget.
Bodies in Rembrandt’s “Anatomical Lesson of dr. Tulp”
and in Plastinate Exhibitions
By Ewa Kotz
June 2018
Supervisor
Supervisor / Examiner
Table of Contents
Introduction...2
Chapter One: The Corpse in Rembrandt’s “Anatomical Lesson of dr. Tulp”...7
Introducing…the Corpse...7
Portraying the Corpse...10
Looking at the Corpse...14
Painting Atrocity...20
Chapter Two: Cadavers in Human Plastination Exhibitions...26
Introducing…the Bodies...26
Body, the Teacher: Educational Values of the Plastinates...29
Between Subject and Object: Plastinates as Commodities...35
(Un)Mournable Bodies: On Plastinates’ Provenance...39
Chapter Three: To Reverse the Forgetting. Another Look at “Anatomical Lesson of dr. Tulp” and Plastination Exhibition...48
Introducing…Recovered Pasts and Uncertain Futures...33
To Depict or to Remove. Different Ways of Dealing with Transgression...51
Body as Waste: Uncertain Future of the Plastinates...56
Conclusion...66
Introduction
This is a work on a body.
When I announce “body”, I think of it in its fleshy materiality, in its corporeality. I think of a slayed body; a wounded body, a body that is tortured and killed, a body being flayed, and finally, a body that is displayed. The body being forgotten, omitted and obscured – reduced from its corporeal dimension to a symbol, or a thing.
This is thus, also, a work on death: on the ways it grasps the bodies, and on how it is being ignored by the living. This is a work on how this bodily corporeality is being denied and how can it be restored. I aim to show the ways in which this restoration might proceed, considering bodies’ troubled past and uncertain future.
The two objects that I am looking at, although seemingly different, are nevertheless subtly linked to each other through a complicated network of meanings and references. What makes them an intriguing object for juxtaposition are the practices of obscuring the materiality of these bodies and omitting the death that is central to them. My objects of interest are one body of a 17th century criminal, painted by Rembrandt while lying on a
dissection table, and other bodies, flayed and exhibited – in so called “plastinate exhibitions”. These expositions contain real human bodies that have been either way donated or acquired differently (I write more on this subject in Chapter Three). Gunther Von Hagens’ “Body
Worlds” is the most famous one of these exhibitions. Throughout this
work, I am thus writing about “bodies” mostly, although they are dead bodies. Yet their death seems distant, as if it happened somewhere in the background. This is another
problem I try to tackle in this work: the ever-present obscurity of death. I look at the strategies that are used in the museum expositions to hide death that is present within the objects they are exhibiting and I try to find the reasons behind this.
Violence is another recurring theme. I write on violence inflicted on both bodies and images. Violence is, first of all, a manner to acquire bodies – in both penal dissection and in the plastinate exhibitions, if we agree that some of the cadavers have been indeed recovered from Chinese prisons, as I show in this work. But there is also violence inscribed in forgetting, and in treating bodies as if they were symbols rather than flesh, and educational tools rather
than human remains. In this sense,
I want to propose another reading that would “restore” these bodies’ materiality.
Throughout this work, I argue that the available ways of looking at the bodies are insufficient to understand their historical significance for the past and the consequences of their
existence in the future. There is much more than solely what is being offered by the museum guides and art history books; I want to explore these new possibilities of understanding the
bodies. In Chapter
One, I discuss Rembrandt’s “Anatomical lesson of dr. Tulp”. What interests me here is the body being dissected by this 17th century surgeon: how is it being looked at? This
masterpiece was analysed by many art historians and cultural analysts; I look at them examining the painting: what exactly do they see, what do they underline and what do they omit in their analyses? I intend to show other ways of viewing the painting; other angles might be made visible; different stories, unheard or ignored before, may be discovered. I begin by introducing Amsterdam’s Surgeons’ Guild that ordered the painting, and I briefly look at Dutch portrait genre in general. Later on, after analysing different interpretations of Rembrandt’s oeuvre, I come back to the subject of the painting, which is a dissection of a
human body. I place it in its historical and social context of the early modern period, showing the ways in which the body was entangled in a spectacle of power, guilt and punishment. With the help of Michel Foucault’s Biopolitics and Achille Mbembe’s Necropolitics I show how execution and penal anatomy were practices regulating both the life and death of the criminal. Foucault’s and Mbembe’s theories help analyse the ways in which the bodies can be used, or even re-used for the “benefit” of others. When looking at the bodies as conquered and abused by the gruesome practices of both Biopolitical and Necropolitical reality, it becomes clear that art history’s reading of Rembrandt’s painting cannot do justice to the complicated and ghastly meanings that this canvas can provide. This is why I encourage to look at Rembrandt’s painting as a possible document of its time as well as the atrocities that
were intrinsic to it. In Chapter
Two, I look at human plastinate exhibitions, like the aforementioned Gunther Von Hagens’s “Body Worlds” and Premier Exhibitions’ “Bodies…the Exhibition”. These displays have become very popular in the last years. Instead of investigating what the reason of their popularity is, I wonder what status can be given to the exhibited body and how it is being addressed in the exposition’s narratives. I look at the exhibitions and their creators’ claims of educational value: how are these claims realized, and how are the bodies being presented in
this “educational” space? When wondering how the
body can be categorized once it crosses the border between life and death and subject and object, I look at the Thing Theory and how it describes the objects investigated. However, instead of tracing the itinerary from an object to a thing, I look at the plastinated cadavers – once human subjects - as possible things. Since the plastinate exhibitions are highly
commercial ventures, I also examine the possible commodification of the displayed body. Can these bodies be bought, and if not – how are they treated in these exposition spaces
filled with advertisement banners and gift shops? Lastly, I investigate bodies’ provenance in the light of claims of corpses being acquired unethically. I use here Judith Butler’s
“grievability” and “mournability” concepts to point at the differences in the treatment of Eastern and Western bodies. Yet, I take here a detour from her theory to analyse if the division between East and West is applicable to all collections and all viewers, or if it rather simplifies the entangled and obscure relations betweenthem looking and them being looked
at. In Chapter Three, I look back at the bodies
– both the painted and plastinated ones. While the idea focused upon in the first two chapters is forgetting the body, in the last chapter I wonder how the bodies can be
acknowledged – how can we reverse forgetting and actually remember and recognize the bodies as once living persons, although, possibly, historically and geographically distant from ourselves. Firstly, I return to my observation from Chapter One, that the body depicted by Rembrandt needs to be acknowledged in its historical significance. I argue that what has made this body’s name from the painting survive to our times is the idea of infamy informing the dissection – the very subject of this canvas. I juxtapose this painted penal dissection with an ancient Roman practice called damnatio memoriae to see how infamy can operate when it is aimed at destroying a person’s memory; I look at ways infamy and its violence reaches both the body and the image of this body. Later on, I wonder what future awaits the plastinated bodies; what happens if they are not deemed useful anymore? How can such bodies be tackled and in which category do they fit - are they still things, as investigated in Chapter Two, or even stuf, obscure objects that nobody know what to do with? Here, I look at the plastinates through the lens of Stuff Theory; I also investigate how the process of plastination itself influences not only them, but also us through its impact on the natural environment: these bodies have become, in a matter of fact, plastic.
If the death of a person does not necessarily mean that the body would perish, but that it might stay with us much longer, then it is crucial to work out new ways of looking at and considering these bodies. I hope this work can be the first step to it.
Chapter One
The Corpse in Rembrandt’s “Anatomical Lesson of dr. Tulp”
Introducing…the Corpse
In 17th century Amsterdam, the Surgeons’ Guild (Chirurgijnsngilde) was a buoyant
organization with a clearly defined structure and career path for its members. Apart from conducting scientific research, dissecting cadavers and organizing anatomical lectures, its well-respected associates fulfilled other public functions, for example that of city council members or the mayor of Amsterdam (IJpma and Van Gulik, Amsterdamse… 92). It comes as no surprise that the Guild members wished to commemorate themselves for the posterity (Mitchell 145). They chose to order paintings from renowned Dutch painters; those paintings were meant to hang in the Surgeons’ Guild Anatomical Theatre in Amsterdam. The most well known of those paintings is “Anatomical Lesson of dr. Tulp” painted by Rembrandt in 1632, portraying a group of surgeons dissecting a corpse. Great master’s oeuvre has been an object of innumerable researches, books and articles. Yet what seems to be common for most of them is the focus on the anatomists and not on the dissected body. While the lives and careers of the surgeons are described in detail, almost no attention is given to the provenance of the corpse.
This is by no means something unusual. Art history’s disinterest in the figure of the cadaver seems to prevail in most of the publications within the field. This is why I would like
to inspect this disinterest and investigate what could be the reason behind it. In most of the concerned literature, body is being incorporated into multi-layered symbolic narrative that is sometimes contradictory. The corpse is thus viewed as a parable of guilt (Bal 391) and well-deserved punishment (Sawday 152); carrying a vanitas message (152); and at the same time, as God’s dignified creation (84) or even as a Christ-like or martyr figure (Park 212).1 Its
dissection is also a symbol of “[t]he ultimate triumph of science over evil” (Heckscher 9). There is however no interest in the corporeality of the cadaver. This is why I want to investigate if another reading of the painting is possible than the one prompted by analysis of the portraiture genre, which often leads to writing a detailed description of the anatomists portrayed, but at the same time leaves out the body – subjectum anatomicum of the
painting. On the other hand, iconological analysis focusing on the symbolic interpretation of the masterpiece would inevitably lead to the same issue, as the body is interpreted only as a carrier for different metaphors intended by the painter. It is thus this juxtaposition of a group of surgeons (as a point of art history’s interest) and the body of a criminal (widely neglected or viewed in solely symbolic terms) that informs this chapter. In the first part of this chapter, I briefly discuss Rembrandt’s painting within (anatomical) portraiture genre. I also analyse its current exhibition mode in The Hague’s Mauritshuis to see which senses are evoked and which are silenced by the museum’s choice of display. Additionally, I compare this anatomical piece’s exhibition mode with another of Rembrandt’s “Anatomical lessons”, namely “Anatomical lesson of dr. Deijman”, exhibited in an entirely different environment in Amsterdam’s Hermitage. I am particularly interested in the contiguity of different modes of display of anatomical depictions. How is opening of the body addressed and explained? How 1 The Christ-like positioning of the corpse is visible especially in Rembrandt’s “Anatomical lesson of dr. Deijman” (1656), with foreshortened body that resembles the one depicted in Mantegna’s “Lamentation over the Dead Christ” (Cristo in scurto) (Sawday 154). Linking the anatomical depictions with pious images of Christ or Christian martyrs is not an uncommon practice, although an interesting one as it contradicts the narrative of guilt and punishment that is present within the same representations (84).
is the corpse referred to – if in any way? In the second part of this chapter, I address the most important scholarly sources and analyse how they “read Rembrandt” (Bal 1991). How is this anatomical painting described and why its certain elements are underlined more than others? Further, I also discuss Rembrandt’s possible “errors”: the depiction of the course of dissection and of cadaver’s hand muscles. These possible “mistakes” have
prompted many art historians’ discussions whether the painting depicts a real event, or should it be rather viewed as a portrait only. In the third part of this chapter, I place the event depicted by Rembrandt, penal anatomical dissection, within historical and social context. I discuss what elements have enabled what Jonathan Sawday, British cultural historian has called ‘culture of dissection’ (Sawday ix), thus systematic interest in human anatomy and belief that some bodies can be claimed by the State and disposed of according to the Sovereign’s own will; they can be cut open to reveal secrets of life.2 To analyse these
factors, I use Michel Foucault’s Biopolitics and Achille Mbeme’s Necropolitics: those concepts address how not only people’s rights, but even their own bodies can be disenfranchised by the State. By this I mean that both practices are aimed at regulating lives and deaths of both individuals and populations. Both of these concepts help to “grasp” the violence exercised on the body that has been so often overlooked in Rembrandt's anatomical painting.
Portraying the Corpse
2 “To deploy a phrase such as ‘the culture of dissection’ is to suggest a network of practices, social structures, and rituals surrounding this production of fragmented bodies” (2).
Portraits were extremely popular in the Dutch Golden Age. Religious leaders, regents, and even merchants, everybody that had the means wanted to underline (or in some
instances to regain) their position within the social ring (Mee 97); ordering a portrait was a perfect and socially acceptable way to do it (97). The group paintings were also a way to ensure one’s importance within a specific societal group. Therefore, group portraits in the Netherlands would often depict wealthy citizens organized in guilds, and preferably during a celebration of some sort (Heckscher 24). Rembrandt’s group portraits were novelty in the Dutch tradition in the sense that he “captured” moments of action, and not simply painted a “collection of faces” (Mee 116) as many of his fellow painters did. Similarly as with a single portrait, all those included in a group painting would have to pay a fee. This was also the case for the group of eighteen portraits ordered by the Amsterdam Surgeons’ Guild from 1601 to 1758 (IJmpa and Van Gulik, Amsterdamse…28). Nine paintings that have survived to our times from eighteen originally ordered have a dissection, or an “anatomical lesson” as their
main subject (28).3 What
is exactly the story presented in the “Anatomical Lesson of dr. Tulp”? The praelector
anatomiae4 dr. Nicolaes Tulp is depicted while dissecting the forearm muscles of the cadaver.
A group of seven surgeons look closely, although the gaze of some wanders disturbingly towards the viewer. Their black elegant attires contrast with pale skin of the naked corpse. This painting forms a closed unit: a triangle consisting of dark figures with a gloomy
background behind them. The object of their interest lies in the very centre of the painting: cadaver of the freshly executed criminal, Adriaan Adriaenszoon ‘Kint’ (‘Kid’). Convicted for
3 In the later 18th century paintings ordered by the Guild, the subject drifts more towards a portraiture with
single memento mori elements like a human skull, or simply surgical tools that provide information on the function of the Guild’s members. Moreover, the wardens gradually take place of the surgeons (IJmpa and Van Gulik, Amsterdamse…214).
4 In other words, doctor medicinae, thus a medical doctor trained within university. He would lead the dissection (25).
numerous crimes (several robberies and attempts of murder) (97-98), he has been finally
captured and hanged on the 31st of January, 1632 (99). How does
the museum’s present-day form of display announce the topic of this painting, which is ‘Kint’s dissection? Below, I discuss how the Maurtishuis museum in The Hague presents Rembrandt’s canvas. I want to argue that it is important to take a look at museum’s exhibition strategy; this can help understand the contemporary narrative that has been created by the museum and compare it with other modes of display available to us elsewhere, so that different ways of looking at the corpse in anatomical paintings can be addressed. The painting’s size (it mountains over other paintings collected in the same room), its location (opposite the doors, which indicates that this painting is the very first one that the public sees) and the couch placed in front of it (welcoming the viewer to sit down and scrutinize the canvas) clearly show that this piece has been chosen as one of the highlights by the museum staff. Contrasted with other paintings of Rembrandt and different Golden Age Dutch painters (as Frans Hals and Gerrit Dou) being exhibited in the same space, it seems as if the “Anatomy lesson” has been placed there rather accidentally. These other paintings consist of Biblical and mythological scenes and portraits. Rembrandt’s painting with its fleshy, pale cadaver set against Old Testament’s patriarchs, Greek gods and noble
Protestant ladies looks as if it belongs to another narrative, and does not quite fit in its current setting. It contains something that other paintings lack: intrinsic violence present within its frames.5 The nakedness of the corpse is not a graceful, serene one, as often seen in
mythological scenes. There is a meaty bloody limb exposed, contrasting with the cadaver’s cold white-greyish tone: this body is to decompose soon.
5 There is nonetheless one other painting depicting brutality, or rather alluding to it. I am referring here to Rembrandt’s “Andromeda” (1630), where the mythological heroin is presented as chained to the rock and awaiting her confrontation with the sea monster. She would be however soon rescued by Perseus. While this painting does include depiction of (gendered) violence that only a male hero can challenge, it is nevertheless not a historical portrait showing violence of a real historic event.
“Anatomy lesson” is the only painting in the room with a detailed description regarding its creation and painting technique.6 However, this explanation does not mention
the figure of the cadaver at all. The violence of the execution and torture preceding it (which I discuss later on) are also not addressed. This lack of information regarding historical
background of the depicted dissection and its conspicuous backdrop against other, such different paintings add to the ambiguity of this masterpiece’s possible readings: how exactly should we understand this gruesome piece in this setting?
Rembrandt’s other anatomical piece, “Anatomy lesson of dr. Deijman”7 (currently on
loan from the Amsterdam Museum and displayed in Amsterdam Hermitage Museum), is being exhibited in quite a different environment. The contrast of its mode of display with the one from Mauritshuis is striking. While in the Mauritshuis the painting is stripped of almost any contextual and historical information, “The anatomical lesson of dr. Deijman” is exhibited as a part of the “Gallery of the Golden Age” collection, which presents several group
portraits of the wealthy Dutch citizens. The anatomical section is named “Craft and Prestige” (“Ambacht en Prestige”). Gathered together in two small, scarcely lit rooms, anatomical paintings ordered by the Surgeons’ Guild from Dutch Golden Age painters Nicolaes Pickenoy, Adriaen Backer and Rembrandt are exhibited together. Paintings’ current display mode explicitly situates them within the 17th-century anatomical portraiture genre and gives
context to Rembrandt’s story. These anatomical group portraits collected by Hermitage are accompanied by detailed description of the Surgeons’ Guild’s history and the dissections
6 “Rembrandt was only twenty-five when he was asked to paint the portraits of the Amsterdam surgeons. The portrait was commissioned for the anatomy lesson given by dr. Nicolaes Tulp in January 1632. Rembrandt portrayed the surgeons in action, and they are all looking at different things. Dynamism is added to the scene by the great contrasts between light and dark. In this group portrait, the young painter displayed his legendary technique and his great talent for painting lifelike portraits”. This description is also available at the museum website (Mauritshuis.nl).
7 “Lesson of dr. Deijman”, together with “Lesson of dr. Tulp” are the only two anatomical paintings where we know the identity of the bodies presented on the dissection table. In “Deijman”, it is a corpse of young Flaming Joris Fonteijn, alias “Blackjack” (Zwarte Jan). Similarly as ‘Kint’, he had already had a few sentences for theft before he was hanged after a violent robbery with a knife (IJmpa and Van Gulik, Amsterdamse…114-115).
conducted. In this sense, the necropsy depicted by Rembrandt is not a single, unique event, as it would seem by the analysis of solely Mauritshuis’ painting. Rather, as “Anatomy lesson of dr. Deijman” shows, it can be inscribed in and explained by a wider historical phenomenon that would allow to annually claim and dissect vile bodies of those trespassing the law:
criminals, prisoners, mentally ill etc.8 Mauritshuis displays
thus “Anatomical lesson” without historical context, which can be explained by the fact that Rembrandt’s painting is treated there as an art history’s masterpiece; in this sense, what is underlined is the mastery of Rembrandt as a painter. On the other hand, in the Hermitage the artworks are seen as important historical artefacts that can provide information on the life in the Dutch Republic of the Golden Age. However, in spite of the fact that the
Hermitage’s way of display provides much more background information on the history of anatomical paintings and dissection lessons, what it has in common with the Mauritshuis’ exhibition is disinterest in the body on the dissection table. Execution is mentioned only briefly; it is again the wealth and importance of the surgeons that seem to inform most of the museum labels. The only time when the cadaver is addressed in the description is Pickenoy’s “Osteology Lesson of dr. Egbertsz” (1619): “[t]he English pirate executed in 1615 could never have imagined that he would end up as a skeleton in an Amsterdam group portrait!”, scoffs the museum description. It is as if the pirate had been given a one-time opportunity of being portrayed along the renowned surgeons.9 This light and humorous
description obscures the gruesome reality in which everything that is left out of an executed person, after a thorough dissection, are his bones. This final product of anatomical lesson would be used not only as education aid, but also to provide the surgeons with an
8 I explain the concept of vile bodies in detail later on in this chapter.
9 I discuss the irony of concomitant infamy (due to being portrayed as a corpse) and elevation (of being remembered) in Chapter Three.
appropriate background for their portrait. In this sense, human corpse is a socially acceptable backdrop to present professional skills and importance of anatomists; its
presence in the painting can be only explained by these qualities rendered by his body. Yet, how is this body being looked at in most of the art analyses? I investigate it in the next paragraph.
Looking at the Corpse
How has the “Anatomical lesson of dr. Tulp” been analysed and interpreted in art history so far? What is most striking in this painting is the fact that the body of ‘Kint’ has not been cut open according to the traditional anatomical order. Surprisingly, dr. Tulp starts the anatomy lesson by flying the hand of the cadaver. Since the order of a dissection was always rigidly scheduled, starting with the opening of thorax (Steiner 274n5) to access the most vulnerable internal organs before their decomposition (IJpma et al. 890), it is fascinating that Rembrandt’s painting breaks up this order. Whether the anatomical sequence would be restored after the hand muscles are dissected, remains uncertain. This deviation from the traditional dissection order has prompted various discussions regarding Rembrandt’s possible error (Heckscher 66)10 or, to the contrary, meticulously encoded symbolic message. 10 On the other hand, closer analysis of other anatomical paintings shows that the traditional dissection order would be disrupted more often than not. Starting chronically, in the Pieterszn’s “Anatomical lesson of dr. Egberszn” (1601-1603) dissection has not yet begun. Second painting by de Keyser depicting the same anatomist, “Osteological lesson of dr. Egberszn” (1619) is not a dissection, as its title informs, and its point of focus is a human skeleton. Only a part of the third painting made by Pickenoy, “Anatomical lesson of dr. Fonteijn” (1625-1626) has survived the fire in Surgeons’ Hall at Nieuwmarkt in 1723 that has also partially destroyed Rembrandt’s second anatomical painting (Kooijmans 385). What is left out of it, makes it rather a memento mori warning that an anatomical lesson in the traditional sense. Further, after Rembrandt’s two anatomical pieces (where in the “Anatomical lesson of dr. Deijman” the brain is being dissected after opening
However, as Norbert Middelkoop, Dutch art historian and conservator at the Amsterdam Museum notes, it would be highly doubtful that the Surgeons’ Guild which commissioned the portrait would accept such a blatant mistake (Middelkoop et al. 20-21).11 Therefore, a
symbolic significance has been inscribed to the painting (20-21).
In spite of belonging to the portraiture genre, Rembrandt’s anatomical piece is thus filled with metaphors and therefore has always been of interest to iconologists, art historians and culture analysts. For example, in “Reading Rembrandt” Mieke Bal, Dutch cultural analyst suggests that dr. Tulp is depicted as competing with God: by manipulating the hand muscles of the cadaver, he is triumphing over death (Bal 393-394). Contrary to this, Gary Steiner, American philosopher intimates that the painting does not present a conflict between secular scientific ambitions and Christian piety, but rather that both are incorporated into a new Baroque identity: “(…) from the standpoint of Baroque consciousness, there is an inner compatibility rather than a paradox or tension between the optimistic endorsement of earthly science and the putatively pessimistic resignation to the inevitability of death”
(Steiner 273). There is also much
debate regarding the question whether the paintings truly depict an actual event or they are merely portraits made in the artist’s studio. Many scholars believe that the dissection
the abdomen, which conforms with the traditional dissection order), there is Backer’s “Anatomical lesson of dr. Ruysch” (1670). Ruysch is dissecting inguinal lymph nodes from the thigh of the cadaver (IJpma and van Gulik ’Anatomy Lesson'… 1996). This also disrupts the anatomical order, but it is understandable since Ruysch was a pioneer in the lymphatic system discovery (IJpma and van Gulik, Amsterdamse…143). Next painting depicting Ruysch, painted in 1683 by Van Neck, is a dissection of an infant; this one is conducted according to the order. Troost’s painting from 1728 presenting dr. Röell is also not orderly structured: he begins the anatomy by opening the knee of the corpse. Finally, in Regter’s painting of dr. Camper (1758), the anatomy concerns only the throat of a severed head: the rest of the body is not depicted. IJpma’s and Van Gulik’s Amsterdamse anatomische lessen ontleed provides a detailed description on each anatomical painting and whether or not it conformed to the traditional dissection order.
11 Additionally, there was also an ongoing discussion whether Rembrandt has painted the dissected arm correctly, thus pointing at possibly yet another mistake of the master. The ambiguity of the depiction led some to argue whether it were the flexor or extensor muscles that are shown in the painting (IJpma et al. 883). Only a dissection experiment conducted in 2006 at the University of Groningen showed that there could have been no mistake. Few anatomical differences between the painted cadavers’ arm and the dissected corpse from 2006 might be subscribed to the age gap between both individuals, their anatomical variations or due to
depicted by Rembrandt is fictional or is just a symbolic representation of the real anatomical event (Baljet 3). In a similar vein, Jonathan Sawday argues that since there was no
permanent anatomical theatre in Amsterdam when the painting was made,12 dissection
could not have taken place (Sawday 150). On the other hand, the annals of the Amsterdam Surgeons’ Guild explicitly mention the names of the criminals executed and dissected in 1632 and 1656 when Rembrandt painted his artworks, as well as the surgeons conducting the dissections (IJpma and Van Gulik, Amsterdamse... 97-98; 114-115). Since those dissections happened to be annual ones, it is highly possible that Rembrandt’s paintings do depict actual anatomies, although altered through Rembrandt’s artistic vision and the order’s
requirements. For example, dissections conducted by the Surgeons’ Guild were public; they were available to the crowd for a fee (Hecksher 32-33). In this sense, they were also an educational and moral spectacle, emphasizing the guilt of the dissected criminal: Mieke Bal calls 17th century’s anatomical dissections “theatrical performances” and “social rituals”; they
were “ritualistically structured” “public exorcism of guilt” (Bal 391). Yet there is no public in Rembrandt’s “Anatomy Lesson”.13 The reason behind the fact that no curious observers were
depicted in the painting might be simply of material nature, since each of the portrayed surgeons had to pay for his presence in the piece. Nevertheless, the emphasis lies on the surgeons; their “vanity and pride, even a certain pomposity” (Mitchel 151) is clearly visible.14
Almost none of the scholars discussing symbolic meaning of Rembrandt’s painting seem to be interested in the corporeality of the cadaver. Only Dolores Mitchell (American art historian) and Francis Barker (British literary theorist)
12 “Anatomical lesson of dr. Tulp” was painted in 1632, whereas only from 1639 the exact location of an official “anatomical room” (located in Amsterdam’s Nieuwmarkt) could have been assessed (Heckscher 97).
13 “And of the many spectators who were wont to attend public anatomy lessons there is no trace whatever” (Middelkoop et al. 38).
14 This is why the Gallery of the Golden Age in Hermitage is advertising their portraits with a humorous slogan which seems to have been the true motivation behind ordering most of the paintings: “Look at Us!”
pointed at the invisibility of the body (Barker 70) and at the fact that even dr. Tulp and the rest of the anatomists are simply avoiding the body by not looking at it and not even touching it – Tulp, after all, uses forceps to access the hand’s muscles (Mitchell 147-148). Following this trail, I would like to argue that by viewing the painted anatomy as a portrait only and by not addressing the fact that a dissection was a social-historical spectacle,
Rembrandt’s painting is yet again being reduced to a simple representation of those wealthy enough to pay for portraying their likeness. In this, the body of the criminal is not addressed as it is viewed as a mere background informing about surgeons’ skills to open it up. This is why I would like to show that by perceiving anatomical paintings as mainly symbolic and commemorative and not as depicting historical events, the figure of the cadaver has been deprived of significance. As we have seen, even the painting’s description in the Maurtishuis where the piece is exhibited omits his figure. It is as if the anatomy lesson was conducted without a corpse. The opening of the body and the flying of the hand are not addressed. Execution is not mentioned either. Death is hidden away.
Therefore, I would like to argue that by re-reading the painting, by focusing on the figure of the cadaver and by trying to see an actual human being behind it, another perspective might be revealed. This links with historiographical turn towards the “history from below”, thus towards stories of lives of those normally viewed as insignificant by historians (Port 108). It is then not the respected praelector anatomiae and the rest of the surgeons, but the executed criminal that might lead us towards deeper understanding of how Biopolitics and Necropolitics would “work” in the early modern period. By Biopolitics I understand the practices referring to controlling both entire populations as well as
individuals in order to decide over the entirety of their existence; in this sense, the authorities can rule both entire groups and single members of these groups by subtly
regulating different aspects of their lives, from disciplining their behaviour to deciding over public health practices. Departing from Biopolitics but going a step further, Necropolitics is aimed at regulating not only the lives, but also deaths of whole populations and individuals; it can organize entire societies according to who is more worthy of living and who is not; the death of the precarious ones can be nevertheless used for the benefits of others – I discuss it later in this chapter. Thus, while Foucault, French philosopher and social theorist is
concerned with the Sovereign deciding about who can live and therefore controlling population’s “(…) problems of birthrate [sic], longevity, public health, housing, and
migration” (Foucault, The history… 140), Mbeme’s more pessimistic theory addresses those
who can die by the hand of the authorities. While Mbeme (a Cameroonian philosopher)
analyses Necropolitics of slavery, concentration camps and Israeli occupation of Palestine, I argue that it also concerns vile bodies. This English translation of Latin corpore vili denotes those whose bodies can be used for the benefit of science: “(…) sentenced to death, galley slaves, prisoners, orphans, hospital patients, paralytics, slaves and those dying, who have been employed as material for experiments shaping the contemporary medical disciplines” (Chamayou 5)15. Since Rembrandt depicted a penal anatomy of an executed criminal, this
body in the painting is an example of what was seen as a raw material on which Sovereign’s power could be executed. In this sense, I want to argue that both Biopolitics as Necropolitics enable to look at Rembrandt’s painting more as a historical document of its times than only a group portrait. By claiming that the painting can be “read” through the “lens” of Biopolitical and Necropolitical theories, I suggest that it might unveil the power relations present within the State that sentenced ‘Kint’ to death; this is important if we want to analyse the painting in its historical significance. This power, in Foucauldian sense, would be “(…) essentially a
15 As far as I am aware, there is no English translation of this book yet. I used Polish edition from 2012; translation from Polish to English is mine.
right of seizure: of things, time, bodies, and ultimately life itself; it culminated in the privilege to seize hold of life in order to suppress it” (Foucault, “Right of Death…” 42). And, as Francis Barker has noted, "(...) the power of the sovereign pursued the flesh of the transgressor beyond death itself" (Barker 66). Indeed, the dissection executed on the body of a convict could be seen as an additional punishment. For many felons, dissection following the execution might have been feared more than the death itself. There could have been different reasons to this, from the belief that the dead corpses of those undergoing dissection could still feel pain inflicted by the knife of the surgeon (Mitchell 152) to the conviction that “(…) their mutilated bodies would be unable to answer the call to be reunited with their souls at Resurrection” (Mathiasen 476).16 Often, to spare their family members or
associates this dreadful fate, the body might have been sneaked out of the gallows before the anatomists would be able to claim it (Spierenburg 89).17 Interestingly thus, in order to
escape the Necropolitical social reality of the early modern period, yet another transgression was made. However, how exactly did Necropolitics operate and how would it make the body useful for its purposes? I explain it in the following paragraph.
Painting Atrocity
16 Interestingly, Sawday points at the fact that this belief was not grounded in the Christian theology:
“[p]opular belief that denial of burial involved the punishment of the soul appears to have been widespread in the early-modern period, despite the fact that neither the protestant nor catholic churches regarded intact Christian burial as a prerequisite for obtaining posthumous grace” (Sawday 280n2).
If we agree that the penal dissection in the early modern period was a scrupulously planned and organized performance and a presentation of Sovereign’s power, what could be then the significance of the body if viewed not in symbolic but rather corporeal terms? It should be seen as a reminder of a real event, as what is left of the display of guilt and punishment, understood in its most literal sense: thus not necessarily the delivery of a justified sentence, but rather a “spectacle of suffering” (Spierenburg 1984). Execution and dissection were tightly linked to each other; they were meant as control methods of both unruly criminals and citizens: while the convict received the punishment, the public would be provided with a moral tale and a warning. By this I mean underlining Sovereign’s authority and power by deciding over life and death of its citizens and, additionally, over their bodies –
both the living and the dead ones. While
Biopolitics and Biopower – Sovereign’s authority over members of society and their lives can explain how they were divided into those who are “let live”, Mbeme’s Necropolitics and Necropower aid to answer how the bodies of those who were not could be used “for the greater good”18 since they were, in contrast to other bodies, disposable (Mbembe 27). In this
regard, the body within “an anatomical lesson” was a very tangible proof of the existence of a “medico-criminal jurisdiction” (Sawday 63) in which the body was in a way “recycled”. It served its purpose in different dimensions. First, “[f]rom being an object of contempt or horror, whose provenance was the gallows, within the [anatomical] theatre the corpse was remoulded into an iconic lesson in human destiny” (72). There, under the knives of the surgeons, it would be scrutinized and cut open: the secrets of the dead body would “help”
18 While the public dissection was said to have “useful and noble” goals such as “(…) gathering of information and the dissemination of knowledge of the ‘mystery’ of the human body” (Sawday 4), in fact it was far from providing any useful insights into the human anatomy for the benefit of the society. Opening of the corpse would not necessarily contribute to comprehending various diseases and malfunctions of bodies. After all, the carcasses claimed from the gallows and gibbets were mostly healthy young male bodies. For example, both criminals painted by Rembrandt – ‘Kint’ and Fonteijn – were in their twenties and accused of violent robberies and attempts of murder, which in general implies rather good health and physical strength.
the living. What some scholars might have thus read as a subtle indication of good’s triumph over evil and well-deserved justice, might be thus analysed in a different manner: as a way of justifying repressions and violence of the State; of deciding who can live and who can die, and of enabling the vile bodies to be used for the medical purposes. By this, I mean that the delivery of justice was not simply the execution itself; what has preceded and succeeded it was also a part of the planned spectacle of Sovereign’s power. On the one hand, there persisted the threat of infamy and eternal condemnation; these perils were strongly
underlined in the morals told before execution and dissection. On the other hand, there was a wide array of torture conducted in public. And all the prominent members of the city, including the anatomists, might have been included in this gruesome display of power: “[w]ell into the nineteenth century, Dutch patricians as well as magistrates elsewhere did not shy from the spectacle of delinquents who were beaten, broken and put to death. They could still view it unambiguously as a positive event; as a manifestation of their monopoly of
justice” (Spierenburg 55). What Rembrandt
depicted might be thus a representation of the dynamically functioning power relations of the State: of the Sovereign delivering the sentence, executioner bringing the convict to the gallows or the scaffold and then killing the prisoner, and finally the anatomists claiming the body in order to dissect it (Sawday 63). In this respect, a public dissection was rather a violent spectacle empowering the Sovereign and a convenient stage for providing the public with a strategically planned moral than method of gaining and disseminating knowledge of bodily secrets. This is why I aim to underline that “Anatomy lesson of dr. Tulp” depicts more than just what can be seen in a superficial reading: the men of science and a corpse. While only the surgeons and the cadaver are depicted on the canvas, it is noteworthy to underscore once more that the surgeons do represent the Sovereign: it is his authority in delivering the
justice that made the dissection possible, and his verdict that enabled the anatomists to obtain the body.19 The aim of the cadaver is thus to serve as a tangible evidence of
Sovereign’s politics, of the possibility to decide on life and death (Foucault, “17 March 1976” 240-241), and of body’s usefulness for the sake of science: death of the person is here utilized in its entirety. Yet, within the painting’s narrative, there is no human body anymore, but a symbol. It is especially visible in the “Lesson of dr. Tulp”: in this body-as-symbol, the skin of the corpse is left untouched (apart from the forearm that is being dissected). There should be marks left on the criminal’s body by the Sovereign’s apparatus of oppression: the investigators, the executioner and finally, by the surgeons. It is known that ‘Kint’ has been severely tortured before his death so that he would confess to his crimes. He was whipped and burnt; however, none of these marks that must have been left on his body were depicted by Rembrandt (IJpma and Van Gulik, Amsterdamse…99). ‘Kint’ was hanged, but there are also no marks on his neck: it is simply not visible from the angle of the viewer (Mitchell 147). The body does not show these signs of violence as this part of the narrative has been silenced for the aesthetics effect, and not to draw the attention away from the portrayed surgeons, the official “heroes” in the painting (99). In this passage from body to a symbol, a human being of flesh and blood became a neutral tool of power representation and knowledge-production. The tale being told in Rembrandt’s paintings is a story told from the perspective of the Authority, even if its presence is obscured and visible only in its representatives. The painting depicts thus Biopolitical and Necropolitical reality where knowledge-production by the anatomists is tightly linked with Sovereign’s orders on his subjects’ both life and death. What is accentuated here is not violence of the torture and execution, but rather neutrality of scientific progress.
19 The Amsterdam Surgeons’ Guild received an official approval to dissect executed criminals from the King Philips II in 1555 (IJpma and Van Gulik, Amsterdamse…20).
Therefore, I would like to argue that the lack of visual elements signifying violence is what obscures the atrocity in Rembrandt’s painting. Torture is here exchanged for punishment, and penal dissection – for medical knowledge. For example, when Mieke Bal intimates that by dissecting the muscles of the hand dr. Tulp competes with God, she points at the struggle for scientific recognition of the human skills (Bal 393-394). Yet she does not address the fact that this very struggle takes place in the frames arranged by the Sovereign; that the whole process has been made possible by rendering the bodies available for medical investigation; and that there is violence inscribed not only in the crimes of the convict, but also in his punishment.
Seen in this light, Rembrandt’s painting can be viewed as a document of its timeshowing how vile bodies were dealt with. It is a proof of how little regard was given to the human body, perceived mostly as an object, treated as a material or a thing on which an anatomy training would take place.20 While each of the depicted
surgeons had to pay to be included in the canvas, the criminal paid with his life: this currency is however not accepted. ‘Kint’ is not officially recognized as having a role in this event; the presence of his body is merely alluded to in most of the concerned literature. While
Rembrandt’s painting does not refer to the execution or the torture that preceded it (as it rather carefully obscures them, for the body is perfectly clean and free of any signs of violence), it does elevate the surgeons, the men of science, who took part in the violence of this juridical-medical endeavour. If Rembrandt's painting can be viewed in this way, then it means that it is not only a portrait, but also an evidence of the “spectacle of suffering” (Spierenburg 1984) that the body underwent.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I tried to provide another perspective on Rembrandt’s anatomical masterpiece than those widely found in the art history. Instead of focusing on the
honourable anatomists and their praelector anatomiae, dr. Tulp, I chose the dissected corpse as my point of focus. By intimating that the corpse should not be analysed solely in symbolic terms (as a memento mori figure, guilt and punishment metaphor and as a symbol of human longing for revealing the secrets of science), I wanted to underline the fact that it can be also seen as an indication of violence and oppression of the Sovereign. This violence was tangible and would reach the body in different ways, always leaving its marks on the flesh. Those marks however would be hidden away to keep the narrative of the crime and punishment
integrated. There is yet
another instance in which the human body would be used for the sake of science, but at the same time made into a spectacle. Similarly as in the Rembrandt’s painting, any violence that might have been inflicted upon the body would be shunned away in order to maintain the entirety of the scientific progress’ tale intact. I refer here to the contemporary use of human cadavers in the exhibitions such as Von Hagens’ “Body Worlds” or Premier’s “Bodies…the Exhibition”, which would be analysed in Chapter Two.
Chapter Two
Cadavers in Human Plastination Exhibitions
Introducing… the Bodies
Moving away from the 17th century dissection’s depiction and its obscured, forgotten
cadaver, we are now approaching a contemporary way of displaying human bodies. In this chapter, I analyse the (in)famous plastinate exhibitions of dr. Gunther Von Hagens “Body Worlds” and those of his imitator, Premier’s “Bodies…the Exhibition”.21 This analysis is based
on both my own findings from Von Hagens’ permanent exhibition of “The Happiness Project” in Amsterdam and on existing literature of both various Von Hagens’ and his “copycats”’ ventures. I refer to “plastinate exhibitions” in general, and discuss specific ones where
21 There are also other exhibitions using plastinated human remains, for example Meiwo Science or “The Real Bodies” of Imagine Exhibitions. They are however less known and I decided not to include them in my analysis. See meiwoscience.com and imagineexhibitions.com.
applicable. Gunther Von Hagens opened his first plastination exhibition as early as 1995; the very first city to witness his creations was Tokyo (Loveless 108). Ten years later, Premier Exhibitions (also known for displaying the remains of Titanic in “Titanic: the Artifact Exhibition”) started to show
plastinated bodies in the United States as well, working together with Chinese anatomist dr. Sui Hongjin, former business manager of Von Hagens’ project (Hsu and Lincoln 30n1). Both exhibitions are using plastination process to get rid of the wet tissues in the body and to substitute them with other materials, so that the bodies would not decompose.22 In order to
avoid using the patented name of its competitor, Premier Exhibitions refers to “polymer preservation” as their process (PremierExhibitions.com). As the websites inform, “Body Worlds” has been visited by “nearly forty million visitors in over ninety cities in Europe, America, Africa and Asia” (BodyWorlds.com), while Premier’s “Bodies…the Exhibition” has been seen by fifteen millions so far (PremierExhibitions.com). I would like to argue that comparably as in the case of Rembrandt’s painting where the dissected body seems to be the centre of everybody’s attention but is yet overlooked, something similar has happened in the plastination exhibitions. The corpses are referred to unanimously as “bodies”, which is an ambiguous term, since a body might be dead or alive, while corpses or cadavers are always dead. Within the exhibition, bodies are presented only as an educational aid. Both mortality and corporeality of the body, although rendered visible, are at the same time negated – skinless bodies are the same, without visible age, disease or malformations. There has been meticulous work done towards obscuring their ties with death that renders the corpses available for exhibition. In this chapter, I show how the body, understood as flesh fades away
22 The website of “Body Worlds” explains the process in the following way: “[p]lastination is a unique process invented by Dr. Gunther von Hagens in 1977 to preserve specimens for medical education. The process replaces bodily fluids and soluble fat in specimens with fluid plastics that harden after vacuum-forced impregnation. After the bodies are fixed into lifelike poses, they are hardened with gas, heat, or light (BodyWorlds.com).
to be substituted with a thing. My aim is to discover whatthe actual tale behind the
presented body is, how it is being shown to the public, and what techniques and narratives have been applied by the museums and exhibition sites: what has been accentuated and what has been left out?
In the first part of this chapter, I look at Von Hagens’ assertions of democratizing
anatomy for the lay audience. I analyse the strategies that he uses to convince the public about displaying human cadavers in his exhibitions. I also consider the education claims that the exhibitions make. Later on, I analyse Amsterdam’s permanent exhibition of “Body Worlds: The Happiness Project”. I discuss how the exhibitions’ creators are persuading the public of an educational value that these expositions are said to have. I show how the plastinates’ conspicuous positioning is explained and whether the bodies are being differentiated at any level: of sex, age or bodily (dis)abilities.
In the second part of this chapter, I investigate what status can be given to the bodies within the exhibitory space and what problems it brings forward. I explore the thingness of the bodies displayed: the problematic of the plastinates located on the juncture of a human and an object. To scrutinize this, I analyse if the bodies can be deemed things and what problems it brings forward. Bill Brown’s Thing Theory is here of help. Brown, American critical theorist, is interested in the thingness of everyday products that in a way constitute our lives. Things are thus those objects that have lost their economic value, but remain to have their emotional importance to us, sometimes quite unexplainably. Not always are they necessarily souvenirs given to us by loved ones, but even half-broken domestic products that we are somehow not ready to part with yet.
Finally, I address the controversies that have been raised around Von Hagens’ and Premier’s exhibitions. These debates regard the question of bodies’ supply and their
problematic provenance. While some authors point at the issue of possible lack of informed consent of some of the body donors, others explicitly accuse the exhibitors of using corpses of executed Chinese prisoners (Guyer 202). This idea of corpses from the East shown for “edutainment”, thus for both education and entertainment (Schuck et al. 606) in the West links with what Judith Butler has described as “mournable” and “unmournable” lives: the division follows the lines demarking these two parts of the world. However, this “labelling” of bodies into Eastern/Western categories might be more complicated than it seems. After all, Von Hagens’ very first exposition took place in Tokyo; other have been held for example in Singapore. I show that viewing both East and West as cultural conglomerates “containing” and labelling the bodies does not help to tackle delicate and tangled relations between plastinates and their viewers; not all reactions to the exhibited corpses have to necessarily lie along the expected “national” lines.
Body, the Teacher: Educational Values of the Plastinates
Von Hagens, inventor of plastination, claims that by using plastinated bodies, he is taking the anatomy away from the doctors and surgeons, from the obscure and complicated medical books, and bringing it back to the lay people (Connor 862); he is thus “democratizing anatomy (Rodriguez and Starr 1). Von Hagens admits that he himself has had issues with fully grasping the anatomy as taught to him during his medical education; the immerse difference between living, moving people and stiff corpses at the dissection table was too hindering (Von Hagens 36). Therefore, the plastinates are better educational tools for they mimic
people’s natural movements (36); use of the human plastinates is thus explained as a more insightful way of learning about anatomy. According to Von Hagens, plastinated bodies pose an optical bridge between the anatomy and the audience (34). Viewed in such a way,
everybody can learn about the structure of the human body. With the muscles still attached to the bones, with the tendons visible during “frozen” movements carefully chosen and arranged by the dissectors, plastinates are said to be more intelligible to children, students and adults all alike. According to Von Hagens, their educational value owes it to their
aesthetic beauty (Rodriguez and Starr 3). Moreover, the accessibility of education is enabled by the fact that plastinates are not intermediated by anatomical models often seen in educational presentations, for example those for schoolchildren (Linke 152). As claimed by Von Hagens, the authenticity and realism of the plastinates is the main reason of his exhibitions tremendous popularity (152).23
In this view, it is not only the plastinate exhibitions, but also Von Hagens himself that is teaching anatomy: as the creator of plastination process and decisive person about plastinates’ positioning, he decides in which form the knowledge of anatomy would be passed onto the audience. Moreover, in spite of his claims of his exhibitions’ usefulness for both lay and medically trained audience, one wonders if the physicians, surgeons and dissectors can indeed learn something new from arrestingly posed plastinates.24
However, how does this “education” look in practice? How are the plastinates displayed, and are they indeed as educative as their creator claims? Below, I analyse a
23 It is interesting that while medical students’ classes rarely dissect human cadavers anymore, choosing to use pre-dissected corpses or video material instead, or skipping the dissection classes altogether (Dotinga), human plastination exhibitions – using real human cadavers – are gaining more and more popularity within the lay audience. There exists thus interesting rupture between the medically educated professionals (or professionals-to-be) choosing not to dissect bodies at all and exhibitions viewers, probably not medically trained, but allowed to see the flayed body.
24 While I am not negating plastinates’ use in teaching both human and animal anatomy, I do wonder if the exhibitions are indeed that instructive to the medically trained viewers as Von Hagens claims. For the plastinated organs usefulness in medical teaching, see for example Latorre et al.
permanent exhibition of “Body Worlds” in Amsterdam; I am specifically interested in the narratives present within this exhibition space. I want to see how the bodies’ presence is explained and how the death of their donors’ is addressed – what is deemed appropriate to be included in the bodies’ description, and what needs to be hidden away?
In Amsterdam’s exhibition, as in all the other expositions, the visitor is guided through each stage of the human body: skeletal, muscular, nervous, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, reproductive, and urinary systems. In Amsterdam, the concept informing the exhibition is called “Project Happiness”. The organizers claim that the happiness is inscribed in our bodies – we can achieve the state of bliss by taking care not only of our soul and mind, but also of our “mortal coil”. As the flyer from Amsterdam’s exhibition informs,
[t]he quest for love and happiness dominates our lives, but what determines whether we are happy or not? The anatomy museum BODY WORLDS: The Happiness Project in the heart of Amsterdam takes visitors on a thrilling voyage of discovery through the human body in search of what makes us happy and what impact happiness has on our health. (Gunter Von Hagens’…) Happiness is thus something that can be learned from human anatomy. In the words of the organizers, discovering human body is “thrilling” and is a “voyage of discovery”: it seems that only the exhibition can take the viewer on this journey. Moreover, in the exhibition’s
reasoning, happiness is strongly linked with bodily health; mental health is not mentioned, neither in the flyer nor in the exhibition itself. For example, no mental diseases or their aetiology are outlined; only the Alzheimer’s disease has been described in detail, although it seems that this neurodegenerative illness has earned its place in the exhibition due to its links with bodily deterioration: progressing inability not only to talk, recognize persons and link facts, but also to move around, to feel things and to balance and coordinate the body.
If the audience is lured to the exhibitions expecting neutral knowledge of anatomy that would be shared with them, this is certainly not the case. While educative, bodies in the exhibition are by no means neutral (Jespersen and Rodriguez 166). The way in which they are being shown in Amsterdam, as elsewhere, is clearly gendered and sexualized. The skinless, female plastinates have their nipples sawn back to their breasts; this is not the case for male plastinates.25 It seems as if all the female exhibits have quite big breasts – perky, always
enhanced in their poses. These poses are supposed to be “tempting” in contrary to their male counterparts. While male plastinates still have their penises, these are in no way aggrandized, as female breasts are.26 The plastinate named “Living to the beat of your life
(Woman on a swing)” presented in Amsterdam is portrayed sitting on a swing, flirtatiously leaning her head against her arm; she holds the swing’s string in the same hand. Her legs are opened, and, according to the description, “[w]ith her dynamic pose and ease of balance, this plastinate shows the perfect interaction of the muscles. The abdomen was open in the middle, and the intestine removed, revealing organs of the minor pelvis”. However, if this plastinate would be covered with skin and portrayed naked, this pose would be undeniably sexual, or even pornographic. As Uli Linke, American cultural anthropologist puts it, “[e]ven in death, the body is shown to be visually seductive” (Linke 154). Similarly, in the case of two plastinates exhibited as having intercourse, the female plastinate has French-manicured nails attached to her skinless fingers. She needs to be physically attractive and kempt; apparently, in contrast to Mieke Bal’s words about death “loosening gender boundaries” (Bal 396) these need to be meticulously kept within plastinate exhibitions. Viewed in this way, plastinates
25 Basing on different analyses, it seems that the female bodies in different “Body Worlds” exhibitions are always portrayed in a sexualized manner, and what almost always catches the attention of the scholars are indeed the female nipples; these are not shown on the male plastinates. See for example Linke’s and Davidson’s articles.
26 Contrary to Linke’s notes of “(….) enlarged, engorged, and oversized” (Linke 154) male genitalia, this is not what I have observed in the Amsterdam’s exhibition.
have to be “sexy” in order to “catch” the gaze of the observer; when there is no skin and no hair (female signifiers of beauty) to flatter the body, other techniques must be used.27 As if
the sex pose of the plastinates was not enough, the bodies must be alluring as far as possible in these circumstances, almost as if they were porn actors in an act where sex is just but a
spectacle. What else is
presented, and what is excluded in the exhibition’s tale? It seems that sickness has no easy entry to this “macabre Garden of Eden” (Jespersen and Rodriguez 167): there are no sick, crippled bodies in the exhibition. It is thus not anomaly or disease that informs the choice of the bodies, as is very often the case in anatomical museums. While in some of Von Hagens’ expositions bodily malformations are explicitly shown, this is not the case for Amsterdam’s exhibition. Disease and deformation do not fit easily with the narrative of happiness. In this sense, plastinate exhibits consciously erase the link with anatomical displays from 19th
century medical museums where “(…) human suffering and horror of death would become interrelated motifs” (Linke 153).And while some diseased organs might be nevertheless shown (enlarged liver in alcoholic diseases and obesity; smokers’ lungs), those are rather ‘mementos’ or advices for the audience and their health choices (eating less fatty foods;
quitting smoking).28 Apart from bodies being
visually healthy, there are also no wounds and scars visible; no traumas, no injuries of the body.29 These would obscure the proposed narrative in which all the bodies, and therefore all
people, are the same: to the contrary, scratches and lesions make a carcass more “personalized”, marking the history of the individual on their body. This absence of any
27 On allure of female hair, see Morris 16.
28 As Hsu and Lincoln note, plastinate exhibitions omit the influence of environmental factors on the human condition, presenting diseases as result of poor health choices, thus prescribing the responsibility for health deterioration entirely to the patients (Hsu and Lincoln 20). Although they have described Premier’s exhibits and not “Body Worlds”, their analysis shows that different plastinate exhibitions operate within the same narratives. 29 In the very few plastinates in Amsterdam with the skin surface visible, there were no wounds or marks.
scarring of the skin and trauma of the bones links with similar lack thereof in the cadaver painted by Rembrandt as described in Chapter One. Correspondingly as in Rembrandt’s painting, death and pain have been hidden away, although for different reasons: while the violence of hearings and torture depicted on ‘Kint’s body would disrupt the uniformity of the narrative of scientific progress and deserved punishment, wounded and scarred skin would draw viewer’s attention away from the unified beauty of the muscular, plastinated bodies. Displayed bodies have also no signs of age – no wrinkles, no sagged skin. Relived from fat tissue, bodies are slim and muscular: this contemporary bodily ideal has been finally
achieved after death (Durbach 64). The only one
plastinate in Amsterdam’s exhibition showing some signs of body deterioration is the one with steel plates and prosthesis (“Female Orthopaedic Body”). Female cadaver with visible artificial joints is leaning on the knee of a male squatting figure. With her arm reaching her head in a dramatic gesture – as if she was protecting herself, she seems to bounce off the male plastinate and, with the help of medicine granting her new bodily parts, she breaks free. However, the narrative of this piece is rather laying emphasis on the healing of the body with the aid of technological possibilities than on the bodily deformation. It underlines the importance of medical development which enables a person to move freely again.
Nonetheless, whether the female plastinate is presented with her own real prosthesis or were they just added in the course of plastination process to create the planned narrative is unclear. Is then the “healing” of the fractured or worn joints something that has been a part of life of this woman before she ended up being exhibited by Von Hagens as an educative tool? Or is it rather a trick to show the possibilities of modern medicine? In this exhibit, the educational narrative planned by the museum and the obscured past histories of the body donor cross each other. However, stories created by the museum, just as the bodies
“reinvented” and remoulded into intriguing figures would always prevail: after death, the
living have authority over the dead. As shown above, while Von
Hagens postulates democratization of anatomy and invites everybody to see his inventions, the bodies he presents are discretely arranged in poses that have to appeal to the spectators. Deemed superior to any other form of teaching physiology, these plastinated cadavers are presented as belonging to their biological sex. This happens on the levels of both the plastination manner itself (showing female nipples while omitting the male ones) and their mounting. Under the guise of education, muscular plastinated men are involved in activities such as sports; reclining plastinated women are sexualized and inviting spectators to gaze at them. These are nevertheless healthy bodies; only these can fit within the “Happiness” theme of the Amsterdam’s exhibition. However, what are the plastinates exactly – and how can we categorize and describe them? Are they still subjects, or are they rather becoming objects? I investigate this in the following paragraph.
Between Subject and Object: Plastinates as Commodities
I would like to argue that apart from claiming educational values (that the real body would teach anatomy better than a prop or a video), there is yet another strategy used by the exhibitors to eliminate ethical claims that displaying human remains might rise. Although the critique of Von Hagens’ and Premier’s expositions is based mostly on the assumed lack of respect for the dead, one might wonder if it is also not perpetuated by the fact that the human remains have been demoted to the level of material objects that can be touched
(they must not but they might be)30, worked upon, cut into pieces, viewed from every angle
long after their deaths: all those activities that are not thinkable in relation to our beloved deceased ones. Drawing on the Thing Theory, I would like to argue that in the plastination exhibits, the human body has been turned into something between a commodified item and waste.31 Thing Theory is interested in dismantling the subject/object opposition: objects exist
around us and we create and maintain relations with them, therefore we should rather acknowledge these relations than pretend that they do not exist. Our connections with these objects become especially interesting once they lose their usefulness for us and become
things. According to Brown, things are “(…) what is excessive in objects” (Brown 5), thus
what remains after objects lost their value and utility. Surprisingly, and perhaps also
inexplicably, we often refuse to cast away these things even if they are of no further use for us.
Seen in such way, human plastinates with their troubled status only further
problematize the subject/object opposition. Indeed, they exist in constant in-betweenness: on the one hand, they are seen as worn out things, not useful anymore, if one believes in the Cartesian dichotomy between body and mind (Connor 856). Indeed, if one agrees with the view of one biology professor from the Boston University that the “(…) human identity disappears with death at which point we become a ‘collection of proteins and nucleic acids and membranes waiting to decay’”(856), then there comes no harm from re-using the bodies for educational purposes: in this sense, plastinate exhibitions are not unethical. As Uli Linke
30 The visitors are explicitly asked not to touch the specimens. Usually, plastinated bodies are placed in glass cases. However, in many exhibitions there are a few cadavers posed without any layer between them and the audience. Although it is hard to estimate how many visitors have not resisted the urge to touch the specimen, there must have been some. Later on in this chapter, I am quoting Wijers-Hasegawa’s article from Japan Times, where she mentions several visitors touching the bodies at the Tokyo’s exhibition and their reactions to the bodies’ structure.
31 While in this chapter I investigate the materiality of the bodies that turns them into commodified objects, in Chapter Three I look at the bodies through the lens of Stuff Theory and I investigate their possible links with plastic garbage residuals.
