Wellcome Collection, 15 November 2012 – 24 February 2013
Doctors, dissection and resurrection men
Museum of London, 19 October 2012 – 14 April 2013
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| Untitled (skulls with finger and eyelash) by Ray Johnson. From here. |
An exhibition on death symbolism is complemented with one on the social history of medical grave-robbing. Both encourage reflection on our feelings towards dead bodies.
"If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it."
Michel de Montaigne.
Like taxes, death is certain; unlike taxes, it can only be
delayed, not avoided. I am hopelessly muddled on the subject, but I suspect
everyone is.
Our own death may be impossible to come to terms with. The
emotions around bereavement are important, but as they aren’t relevant to
contemplating our own deaths, perhaps other emotions (fear? desire? of what?)
are involved. Death is related to, but distinct from dying, from fear of old
age or from pain. We feel there can be an unjust death, but a just death is a
peculiar idea to me too.
The exhibition at the Wellcome Collection is drawn from the
modern cabinet of morbid curiosities of the collector Richard Harris. The
Museum of London complements this wide-ranging exhibition with a more specific
focus on the medical demand for dead bodies for dissection, and how this came
to be regulated in the UK through the 1832 Anatomy Act.
Mostly focussed on visual representations of death, Harris’
collection has a lot of skulls. It seems all over the world, the skull represents
death, either as something to be contemplated and commemorated or something to
be feared and appeased.
A repeating motif in the exhibition is the use of a skull or
skeleton in otherwise everyday settings. A portrait of a doctor with hand on a skull;
personal photos with family members, perhaps, holding a skull; printed books
depicting a skeleton holding the hands of people of all ages and social
situations; Tibetan death masks.
These images address death abstractly, and create a sense of
reflection rather than the horror we usually feel when thinking about death.
The powerful exception is the sets of prints by Callot, Goya and Dix, all
depicting – from different wars – actual or imagined horrors of war, including
some extremely violent deaths, or at least corpse mutilations.
Corpse mutilation is also the main theme at the Museum of
London, and the horror this inspires. The trade in dead bodies, necessary for
medical research, is still fairly shocking, though I’m not sure why. Certainly
the trade had social implications – as hanged murderers were the only legal
source of bodies, it was a source of great shame when the poor had their
relative’s graves robbed, whether illegally or after 1832 legally.
I would have liked more of this social background, and more
on the harsh implications of the Anatomy Act for the poor, as well as more
links to recent controversies over the rich paying for organ donations, etc. I
was surprised to learn that even today, demand for dead bodies exceeds supply.
The two exhibitions provoke introspection on the subject of
bodies, in particular. At the Collection, the skeleton, or skull, is clearly a
powerful, immediate symbolic representation of death. The Museum stresses the
sanctity of the dead body. I think this has something to do with the mystery of
death; that one moment we are alive, the next not. Our bodies don’t seem to
change so very much, though eventually we end up skeletons.
Unsurprisingly, neither exhibition is remotely the last word
on death. But seen together, they help me, at least, to reflect upon that
complicated mix of reactions I feel on the issue.
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