I confess I've never built my Visible man or woman model but I enjoy looking through an anatomy book every now and then.
When I was in Florence a few years back I spent a day in the Specola gallery [ I might be spelling this/ pronouncing it wrong] The gallery was part of the university I think and housed a huge collection of stuffed animals from hundreds of years ago. One of the biggest in the world I think and was very cool.
Also part of the gallery [again I'm too lazy too look up the dates and artist at the moment] was cases filled by 18th century wax artist and anatomist who made wax disections of the human body. Both sections and whole figures. Unbelievable work and I think Taschen has a book of these. It was very strange to see these figures looking very life like and in these beautiful old cases.
On Sunday, Alison and me went to the Ontario Science Centre to see Body Worlds 2 [ body worlds 1 is in Philadalphia I believe].
Dr. Gunther Von Hagens has developed a plasticination process . Plastination makes it possible to preserve an entire body or individual tissues and organs that have been removed from the body of the deceased. Decomposition is halted by removing water and fats from the tissues and replacing these with polymers.
A rather surreal experience to see the "plastinates" posed ice skating or skateboarding reavealing muscles in action and everything else. It was pretty amazing and very strange as well. The place was packed [lots of little kids too, some toppling into the displays while running around ] and it was next impossible to sketch but I gave it a whirl. Nothing to impressive
but here some are anyway.
8 comments:
I've heard about this guys show. It sounds very cool and maybe a little bit creepy. Nice sketches. I like the arm most.
V cool postings and drawings!
I might have to go check it out. Thanks for the heads up! Great studies by the way. At least they will hold a pose.
Thanks for posting this Drazen! We want to go to this- it will be fantastic to see the structures of the bodies. Guess that it will be crowded, though. Very cool sketches!
Great blog, another for my bookmarks! I caught Bodyworlds here in socal and it was a site to see. I liked the smoking man and the exploded muscles of the runner. Amazing the human body, very resilient but delicate...but for artistic anatomy a chance to see how it's all connected.
Wow! I've heard of that wax museum in Florence - always wanted to visit. Must go back. The very top photo looks like an exhibition of Ray Harryhausen puppets! I caught BODYWORLDS on the first day it opened in London a few years back. Von Haagens was present & giving interviews to camera crews - he was scarier than the corpses! Actually the bodies weren't so scary - without eylids & lips they all looked petrified. They had wide-eyed teethy expressions like Wallave & Gromit! I'll dig out my sketches & post them on my blog -
Haha..I can believe he was scarier! That would be great to see your sketches. Between the two I would say the
museum in Florence was was waay better. All the amimals were incredible, rooms filled with just birds.
And the wax bodies were something. Beautiful old anatomy drawings on the wall. Some of the bodies were posed but more like paintings and they something about there expressions looked more painful and alive than the real thing! Plus it was pretty much empty which was nice. I took
quite a few photos which wasn't allowed. Wish I did more sketches but i think I have a couple in a old sketchbook at my mom's place.
In Atlanta right now they have the Bodies: The Exhibition. I'm very curious about checking it out. If I do go, I'll be sure to take my sketchy-book.
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