Carnal art

There is a growing fashion in contemporary art for body artists to work with their own flesh in radical ways that involve medical techniques. Their rhetoric is that their body is their canvas and that they are inscribing their individual statement of self portraiture in their appearance.

One such artist, the French performance artist Orlan, calls her approach "carnal art." From its origin on 30 May 1990 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, Orlan was the first to declare that she was using a new method of making art, incorporating the radical use of surgery to transform her body. This technique was not an attempt like Cindy Jackson (a minor celebrity) to perfect "beautification" of the body, but a wilful attempt to contradict the culturally accepted standards of idealised beauty, replacing these with her own designs.

Other artists have adopted similar approaches, such as Elizabeth Christiansen, who has attempted to look like Queen Nefertiti, and male artists such as Stelarc, who is designing an extra ear.

This art form has radical implications for medical professionals, as carnal art requires the full cooperation of a surgeon to pursue the artists' agendas, and such doctors must share the view that the body is an object for redesigning and improvement. In doing so, collaborating doctors are contravening the commonly held belief systems of the profession and society at large that look to preserve or restore the body to a natural state of beauty and function.

New techniques in medicine and local anaesthesia have initiated a revolution in the practice of surgery, generating a demand for day cases and for more minor interventional operations. This way of anaesthetising the body has meant that the benefits of surgical intervention now outweigh the previous risks of administration of a general anaesthetic. From an artistic perspective, the fact that the patient is able to stay awake has enabled the body artists to participate in the operating theatre.

There has been a profound change in the way that doctors look at the body in the advent of new technologies, and they have observed the increasing self assertion and expectations of patients during medical consultations. The 19th century hierarchy of omnipotent physicians and passive patients is being challenged by these artists and reflects a more interactive patient whose own expectations and demands are often challenging.

This trend has gone hand in hand with a fashion for scientific collaborators in the art world. Public educational foundations like the Wellcome Trust and funding bodies such as Arts Catalyst have encouraged an open professional relationship between doctors and the public, fostering an interdisciplinary interchange of ideas, techniques, and expertise.

It is said that everyone benefits from these collaborations. The artist gains new tools, new insights, and safety in conducting their artwork while the doctor is able to experiment in an imaginative way with issues that are outside the normal protocol of scientific experiments. The public then has access to the specialist dialogue through interaction with the resultant artworks. However, this freedom and exchange of ideas is not without its risks.

One plastic surgeon who was willing to help Stelarc find a way to construct an extra ear had to explain to the artist that the construction of an ear was quite a formidable technical undertaking. Historically, ear reconstruction has been one of the most difficult plastic surgical endeavours. There are perhaps 10 real experts in the field internationally, only one of whom works in the United Kingdom.

However, it's not just the artists who are taking the lead in these unconventional approaches to surgical constructions. Burt Brent, a plastic surgeon in California who is the editor of the two volume textbook The Artistry of Reconstructive Surgery,¹ has worked out how to make a human wing!

There are many implications in carrying out these bizarre procedures, not least in the risk to which the artists are exposing themselves. For example, the design that Stelarc has made for an extra ear, positioning the permanent prosthesis right on the front of his cheek, would undoubtedly risk producing a facial palsy. Many other potential problems, including the inevitable ethical ones, remain pertinent to any bona fide surgeon who embarks on such work.

Although these projects are initially thought provoking and shocking, the number of surgeons and artists prepared to challenge the regulatory procedures remains limited. These collaborators have set an important precedent, and their subsequent failures or successes will inevitably set a further precedent for these consensual mutilations and the future of art and medicine.

Rachel Armstrong, medical writer, London
Email: scifi@dircon.co.uk


studentBMJ 2000;08:303-346 September ISSN 0966-6494

1. Brent B, ed. The artistry of reconstructive surgery: selected classic case studies. 2 vols. St Louis: Mosby, 1987.