About all walks of digital painting

Last night I was on 4oD, bored looking for a good documentary,  I found the Crucifixion which was about Dr Gunther von Hagens and his new project called the Crucifixion. If you don’t know Dr Gunther (also know as Dr Death) is known for performing televised autopsies and has patented his technique of preserving human and animals for forever in plastic, called plastination. Dr Gunther has hundreds of people volunteer their bodies for his art works. Now, because Dr Gunther uses human remains to create his art works there are a lot of people out there who are against what he does. His recent project the Crucitfixion has also created a lot of anger from religious followers and some people in general are against what he does. Through this documentary my boyfriend started a debate, he’s against the use of human remains in this manor because he thinks that they could be put to better use, I’m for what Dr Gunther does. Because of his new technique that preserves actual human remains into proper manikins, medical students are working on near enough real bodies, no body is alike as we all know, so I think, though a little weird, it’s a good thing. Also from my point of view there’s no difference from taxidermy from what he does, except he’s not murdering these people just to create art (I have more of a problem with taxidermists that go out to kill animals than I do with this, and yes, I am aware that he’s done animals too). Also in his art, there isn’t any actual tissue or bone left, the resin is pumped in and then the whole body is dissolved in acid leaving the plastic, which produces some amazing results.

Central and Peripheral Nervous System

Also the other reason why there is so much miss understanding for Dr Gunther is the some of the ways he’s arranged his artwork,  some are having sex, then there’s the man on the cross. I know most people will be thinking “ew, oh my god, some old dude is making dead people have sex” and then don’t want to think about it any more, the problem is, people don’t like to think about death and most people don’t want to see sex, so merging both was just too much for a lot of people. But death is a vital part of everyone’s life, everyone has to do it at some point, you’re either very interested in it (as am I) or don’t want to talk about it.

Where I do think that people’s bodies would be put to better use doing “medical research” as my boyfriend put it, a lot of his works are for medical purposes as well as shock and aw art. Also it’s their decision to allow their bodies to be used in this way, I wonder what they would think about it? What their families think? I know the Dr Gunther’s family in his quest to make “The Cross”, they weren’t happy about what he was doing. So where does art go too far? Andres Serrano (also mentioned in the documentary), he’s a photographer born in the United States became on over night success from one picture, “Piss Christ”. The name says it all really, he submerged a crucifix in his own urine. Obviously this has made some people really angry and many of his prints in galleries have been destroyed by some of the public. But for me personally and not coming from a religious background what so ever, I kind of like it, I like the glow that is has around the crucifix, and I’m sure if the artist had used something like apple juice, people wouldn’t have been so shocked or annoyed (which be the way I totally understand why people are so angered by this piece). But I think like all things, art must be taken in context. Being shocking for the sake of it, however I don’t approve of, but most of the time if you look into something instead of taking it on face value this is very rarely he case, you can even see this on TV shows, normally in the first series they but the most sex in than the whole of the show, why is this? It must be something to do with ratings, the more people who talk about it, the more likely people are going to watch it, like True Blood for example, the amount of sex in the first series (and weird sex) is phenomenal, it worked though, a friend talked about it to me and I thought they’d stumbled onto a porno series lol, second series, all of the sex was dulled down quite a lot. The rage that Family Guy cause when Stewie and Brian high fived the 9/11 massacre, most people who were angry about that, didn’t watch it, so it was taken out of context, I’m not saying it was right, but they were angry for the wrong reasons. Frieke Janssens, an artist from Brussles, produced 15 pictures of young at the ages of 5 – 9 children smoking when Brussles introduced the smoking ban, yet again people have taken them out of context and become angry about it. Every article I’ve read on these, they’ve had to put a note on the bottom saying “no children have been exposed to cigarette smoke in the making of this project, these cigarettes were props”. “I’m sorry but how stupid do we have to be to think an adult would purposely make children smoke”, the inspiration for these was from a youtube video shown below (this video may upset some people, don’t watch it if you’re easily upset, it made me sad)

I don’t think her intention at all was meant to promote smoking but to bring forward the issues of smoking in general and make people think about it, talk about it. I think what she has created is beautiful and very unusual way to put to the public the issues of smoking.

Pop over to her site, Frieke’swell worth a look, she’s done some work for animal rights too (which make hers a saint in my eyes).

In conclusion then I don’t think that art can ever go too far when people are trying to make a point, the most successful head turner artworks are the anti-fur champagnes, they’re shocking and upsetting, but they strike to the very heart of a lot of us and stay in our minds for days, weeks, months and years. Artists need to display the true horrors of the world we live in, or nothing would be done about it, we need people like Dr Gunther von Hagens to further medical science, we need people like Leonardo da Vinici who create anatomical drawings of dissected body parts (a artist born 1452- 1519 (I think) was so close to actually mapping the systemic circulatory system, it was nearly 100 years later when William Harvey (a medical doctor might I add, not an artist) actually discovered it). We need these colourful people to help us understand the world and ourselves as human beings, pull us apart, our emotions and our bodies and try and capture the essence of being human.

“Dumb Animals” by David Baily for Respect for Animals, one of the most memorable campaigns against the animal fur trade.