I have recently become interested in 'Cadavar Art' from helping my friend in NCAD do some research into a project. It is surprising how wide artists interests stretch. Joel Peter Witkin for example travelled to medical schools, morgues and hospitals around the world in order to find corpses and 'freaks' to use in his art. He travelled to Mexico where he smuggled corpses back to the US. He took portraits(photography) of these people, sometimes spending hours with them, finding a good composition. To him, they were far from dead. Sometimes he would cut up the bodies and arrange their parts in different ways, or mix and match parts and sew them together.
In a way this can be compared to the work of Gunther von Hagen. Gunther von Hagen is a controversial anatomist. He appeared on the channel four programme anatomy for beginners, disecting cadavars for learning purposes. Von Hagen invented a way of preserving biological tissue called plastination. This is where the water and fat are replaced by certain plastics. This preserved the body and it will not decay or smell. Von Hagen put these preserved bodies on display in the 'body worlds' exhibition, a travelling exhibition of preserved human bodies and body parts to reveal inner anatomical structures. This is a learning exercise as each body is displaying a different life style or medical condition.


Anyway, I just thought this was an interesting and different approach to art, hopefully you'll find it interesting too.

Steph