Date of Completion
5-5-2012
Embargo Period
5-8-2012
Advisors
Barry Rosenberg; Sylvia Schafer
Field of Study
Art History
Degree
Master of Arts
Open Access
Campus Access
Abstract
Over two hundred licensed creations - plastinated human and animal bodies and specimens - are currently on view in each of seven, independently themed exhibits belonging to Gunther von Hagen’s Body Worlds. While academic readers typically exclude these bodies from conversations of art history, in position, one body, Reclining Pregnant Woman, assumes a particularly referential pose from art historical and archetypal Venuses. She is the only female plastinate frozen, cut and flayed in mid-labor, (with child). Yet, when read in comparison with the seminal works of postmodern feminist theory, certain resonances show that formal and contextual applications of visual discourse upon this body become helpful – not only to resuscitate iconographic value, but also to challenge it.
Recommended Citation
garlick, valerie, "Cutting Edge: Re-reading Iconography in Body Worlds" (2012). Master's Theses. 272.
https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/gs_theses/272
Major Advisor
Alexis L. Boylan