According to Newsweek/MSNBC, an upcoming art show in London will have a display of preserved dead bodies as an exhibit. I should, perhaps, point out that I don't have a per se problem with modern/minimalist/conceptualist art, I just feel it's, well, getting a bit old now. I mean, the idea of treating an everyday object as if it were art was intellectually provocative and challenging... when the Dadaists first thought of it… Nearly a hundred years ago. And I dislike the "anti-Establishment" image so many of these artists try to project. Let's face it, artists like Hirst, patrons like Saatchi, administrators like Serota are the arts establishment these days, and it's captious to pretend otherwise. And I also dislike the implied elitism; the way such-and-such a piece is supposed to jolt me out of my bourgeois complacency and "make me think about things in different ways". I don't need to be made to think. I'm capable of a quite adequate degree of innovative cogitation all by my little old self. And, of course, it's so much easier to fake being a conceptual artist. If I want to pose as a painter, I'll need to learn how to paint. But all I need to do to pose as a conceptual artist is type up a label that says something like... The Exegesis of Irreal Forms, Part XI, by The Fish, $10,000 o.n.o. ...and stick it on any old piece of crap I happen to have handy. Of course, if someone challenges me on it, I would argue that the mere act of posing as a conceptual artist is, in itself, a work of conceptual art. In which case, this post is now a work of art… Peace.
If this is the work of the German biologist ( I forget his name) then I would say it truly is art. Seein is believing in this case. He did people on horse back rendering them visible through and through. It is almost impossible to describe but one body is rendered only as its actual nervous system.
