So Amy shows me a flier for this exhibit the other day and I experienced about a minute of pure nausea. Bodies: The Exhibition is currently showing in New York - it showcases real human bodies. At first I didn't realize from the photos that the bodies were real, and thought - wow, fabulous sculpture. The nausea hit when I realized they were real - I think it was the exposed brain that did it.Now, I love art. I got hooked big time when I was 12, when on a field trip to MoMA I walked through a small door into a huge room in which the only piece displayed was Picasso's Guernica.
It was overwhelming, to say the least. I knew nothing about art, nothing about history, but seeing that was like being totally awake for the first time. There were BIG THINGS out there that I had not yet been aware of. My enthusiasm was not dampened in the least when later that same day I got my hand slapped by a guard for touching Van Gogh's Starry Night. Dude, I'm 12. (It was really bumpy.) 
Ever since, I have based vacations and outtings around museum exhibitions and pieces I always wanted to see. And these pieces are not Monet and Manet; but outsider art, Latin American art, and surrealism. Sure, I still liked Van Gogh, and got to see Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London (the yellows are just not the same in books). But only the out there stuff really gets to me.
So I was surprised by my reaction to this "art". Is it really art? Exposed musculature and skeleton? Maybe in the way they set the expression on the face, or the way the body is posed? The exhibition explains that it gives visitors the opportunity to see themselves in a fascinating way like never before, that it unveils the many complex systems of organs and tissues that drive every aspect of our daily lives and unite us all as humans.I'm just not sure about it. Would we call it insider art? It's a traveling exhibition, with dates scheduled already for Atlanta and Tampa. I just don't know. If I do go, I will need to bring a Double Pepto Bismol Latte.
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7 comments:
The beauty of art is that I don't have to consider it art, even if you do. Personally, I belive that the color and paint of the masters is art. Some of the sculpture I see of two beams welded together, not so much art. Human body was meant NOT to be seen from the inside, or it would have been on the outside....
Gross. Why'd you have to go and put it on your blog? Now I am nauseous too.
lara, later we can go get some pepto bismol lattes. better you are nauseous from the picture than my posts.
You are right it is not art. I was in the health field for a while and took a course in university where we did a disection. People should not be on display as art, it is wrong and I refuse to see the show
It is art ! Pretty meat puppet. Hey, I think that one with his hands on his hips is actually Andy Warhol. Soup cans are not art. Andy Warhol skinned to the pancreas is art. Art for Arts' sake.
I thought he looked familiar - and isn't that totally something that Warhol would do?
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