Nasgp | The Art Of Gp Locuming

As I was shepherded into a dimly-lit lift, I was expecting an exhibition designed to titillate and shock. How do you react to seeing a man standing, flayed of his skin, his internal organs on view, his muscles brick red, his blue eyes staring out at you? Or what about the trio posed round a table playing poker? You may have seen them in the film Casino Royale. James Bond stays cool. His interest is not the plastinates but how the villain manipulates their chips. There was no Daniel Craig the day I visited the exhibition, but a crowd of people, all intensely curious and fascinated. Body Worlds, the controversial exhibition of plastinated human bodies, isn’t voyeuristic. It isn’t the Chamber of Horrors. It turned out to be earnestly educational. And compelling. The only plastinate I personally found disturbing was the man holding his flayed skin in his hands, but I had recently seen much the same in Jusepe de Ribera’s painting of Apollo flaying Marsyas. Ribera painted to disturb. Plastinates are made to intrigu