Two weeks ago, the ODT (March 22) reported that a student at the Dunedin School of Art had installed a sculpture consisting of the body of a dead dog draped over a beer crate. The reaction was immediately negative: the sculpture was removed, the exhibition space was closed, and students gathered to discuss ethical boundaries in art. What kind of ethical limits should artists adhere to?
Can the use of dead animals and, even more so, dead human material in art ever be acceptable?
For some, this use is acceptable if the material is handled respectfully, the owner has given consent, and potential viewers are warned the content may offend. These are important ethical strictures, but are they sufficient by themselves?
And should a distinction be made between the use of animal and human remains in works of art?
The use of human body parts in works of art has a long history. In the 17th and 18th centuries, anatomists such as Frederik Ruysch and Honore Fragonard produced a range of artistic anatomical preparations. Among their quasi-educational exhibits are dioramas featuring human fetal skeletons posed in a fantastical landscape composed of various human tissues. These anatomists presented specimens in a crudely scientific fashion, yet their aims appear to have been primarily art and popular amusement.
Surprisingly, artwork incorporating images of human tissues and cells abound today.
Many are digitally manipulated transformations of medical radiological scans or cell micrographs. Sculptures incorporating human bodily fluids and excretions are not unknown, such as Marc Quinn's self-portrait made using a mould of his head and five litres of his own frozen blood. Andrew Krasnow, an American artist, has used leather made from human skin to produce an American flag and other pieces, to present "histories in skin" as a critique of hate and American exceptionalism.
Twenty years ago, the director of a London gallery and a sculptor were convicted of "outraging public decency" by exhibiting a sculpture incorporating human fetuses in earrings.
In 1997, British sculptor Anthony Noel-Kelly was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment for exhibiting sculptures of casts from human body parts, sprayed with silver and gold gilt.
Currently, Gina Czarnecki, a contemporary UK artist, is exhibiting a series of works using waste human material left over from medical procedures. The cushions of an armchair are made of human fat within leather upholstery. Other works include milk teeth and human hip bones.
All the material was donated with informed consent, and the ethics of display were thoroughly explored.
The only example of pieces produced from human bodies and body parts that has received both critical and popular acclaim, though not unreservedly so, is "Body Worlds", the anatomical exhibitions of Gunther von Hagens. These exhibitions consist of whole human bodies and body parts that have been dissected and preserved by impregnating them with plastic.
While claimed to have an educational focus, they are also marketed as "anatomy art". Ethicists who have commented on the exhibitions generally agree that if "Body Worlds" functioned primarily as art rather than education, this use of human bodies would be unacceptable.
Why is this so?
We recognise a connection between a person when alive and that person's body after death, and so show respect to the person-now-dead by respecting their body. Hence we take seriously a person's wishes before death, although this is not sufficient ethical justification for any use of their body.
For example, we would hesitate to agree to the display of a person's dead body in a shop window simply because that was their wish. That would offend the sensibilities of public decency and of living people.
Is there any place for using human material in art works?
Consent of the person before death is essential.
Public acceptance, nebulous as this may be, cannot be ignored, although it should always be assessed. However, the progression from using medical images at one end, through bodily excretions or fluids and medical waste, to more recognisable body parts (limbs or organs) and then whole bodies at the other end, represents a gradation from possible ethical acceptability to probable unacceptability.
While some artists will undoubtedly argue that, on occasion, the use of human material adds value to an artistic piece, it is important to query the nature of that value, and whether it is sufficient to justify this use. A similar demand is made of scientific researchers to justify their use of human material.
Artistic displays should be held to the same demanding standards.
What, then, do we learn from human material that will help us determine the acceptability or otherwise of the use of animals in artistic installations?
We do not generally regard animals to be as morally valuable as humans, and so some of the strictures applying to the display of humans in artistic exhibitions will be less stringent in the case of animals.
The consent of those responsible for the animal is foundational.
But we also need to go further and specify that the animal was well cared for during life (there was no ill-treatment), and that it was not put to death for the sole purpose of the artistic display.
This leaves the matter of public offence, although this is subjective. What proves offensive to one group of people, in one society, or at one period in time will not be regarded in the same way under other circumstances.
The moral intuitions underlying these reactions need to be taken seriously, but also need to be assessed ethically. Of course, some art may aim to outrage or bewilder people in a novel way, to challenge preconceptions. Even if we applaud this intention, it is not above ethical scrutiny.
• Gareth Jones and Maja Whitaker are researchers from the Bioethics Centre at the University of Otago.
