I went down to London (and it is “down”, not “up”, from here) last week ostensibly to see the William Orpen drawings at Tate Britain.
Emerging from Euston Station feeling a little punch-drunk from travelling two hundred and odd miles in just under two hours, much of it at an angle of 10 degrees from vertical, I staggered across the road to the Wellcome Institute for a rest. (Good café, London prices; reasonable bookshop). The “Exquisite Bodies” exhibition was still on – I’d completely forgotten about it. The following is an extract from a longer piece of writing:
Subtitled “the Curious and Grotesque Story of the Anatomical Model”, the display wobbles uneasily between the clinical, didactic or “scientific” models and the sensationalist, allegedly educational, travelling fairground shows. The elements of voyeurism inherent in the exhibition are approached only obliquely, by reference to the historical “freakshow”.
Many of the anatomical models on display are smaller than life-size and not desperately accurate, and therefore relatively undisturbing. However, the wax model of a dissected head by Joseph Towne carries an impact way beyond its’ intended use for anatomy students. It seemed to me to be pathetic, even tragic, modelled with an almost tender intimacy. Yet it was shown at the Great Exhibition in 1851 and so has a long history of public exposure at odds with its’ ostensible function as a teaching aid within the closed circle of medical education. And, and, and…. it raises so many unaddressed questions: who was the original subject of the model? how did he die? (not obviously hanged, so presumably a pauper, these being the contemporary legal sources of bodies for dissection). Did anyone visiting the Great Exhibition recognise him? Why should a simulacrum of death be almost as disturbing as the real thing? is the distress due to the cultural associations of head & brain, brain & mind, identity and personality? and on and on..
http://www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/exhibitions/Exquisite-Bodies
