About a week ago I stumbled across this sketch for a mask accompanied with photographs the actual mask itself over at composite effects. (click the name for the website)if you can't tell from the drawing, it's a man wearing the skin of a womans head over is own.
So about the mask, it's pretty grotesque, but conceptually fairly interesting. I was wondering why 'gain' was spelled 'gein,' so I checked wikipedia and came up with Ed Gein.
I was pretty astonished at what I found with his crimes, involving digging up corpses from graveyards and making bowls out of their skulls, couches from their skin, etc. He also apparently made a 'suit' out of woman's skin. Him and his crimes inspired movies like 'Silence of the Lambs' and 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." I'm sure there's more movies and details I'm missing, but it's unimportant.
It got me thinking about the thin line between grotesque crime and grotesque art.
More concisely, why is it that Ed Gein is considered a psychotic felon and Gunther von Hagens (creator of the "Bodies" exhibit) is considered an artist?
(picture from the 'bodies' exhibit)
The simple answer is that the bodies used by von Hagens were apparently from consenting donors while Gein simply stole them. Von Hagens also did it in and for the public domain with proper authorization while Gein did not.
Anyway, I got to see the bodies exhibit a couple months ago and was intrigued, but at the same time digusted. The thing that disturbed me most about the pieces was thinking about someone spending night after night laboring over corpses; removing skin, organs, arteries, veins, bones, etc. The very thought turned my stomach while looking at the plastisized lifeless bodies frozen in front of me.
I understand that it's considered art and I do see how it can be considered art, but if someone were to get consent to use bodies to remove their skin, make suits out of them, then sew living models into them to stand and live on display, would that be art?
Not to sound twisted, but I would definitely see that exhibit!
Anyway, it just struck me as strange that two men did very similar things (von Hagen just did it on a more methodical and larger scale), but one was made a criminal and the other was made a famous artist.
It just seems a little backwards to me...
2 comments:
I'm surprised you haven't come across Ed Gein before. For one thing, in my (semi-regular) quests for more pics, videos, and comments/reviews on such things as Femskin, I've come across that name many times. A lot of people, including crossdressers, immediately react with disgust when they first hear of or see a femskin. Quotes like "It puts the lotion in the basket" crop up frequently.
Even just female masking is frowned upon by many crossdressers. They feel they look more feminine with makeup than with a mask, and think they would feel uncomfortable wearing one. I think there's a question of the "uncanny valley" here, but also a dehumanization aspect, where they seem to fear turning into dolls or mannequins, which seems to be part of the set of fantasies most maskers have.
I admit that many masks don't look as good as what some crossdressers can achieve, but on the whole, the best masks (Greyland and Natori are currently the most realistic-looking, to me anyway) tend to compare favorably to what the average crossdresser can accomplish.
I can't wait to see what Rusty over at SPFX/RealU will come up with for female masks. I just hope he doesn't go too far down the line of "character" masks or horror masks, and produces at least one realistic, not exaggerated, female mask.
I fear that Rusty won't grace us with a mask representing an attractive woman. I suspect any female mask he makes, attractive or grotesque in appearance, will be sized for a female head. I also am not holding my breath for the crew at Composite Effects to make any female masks (as creepy as their Doll mask or as pretty as a glamor model's face) designed to fit a man's head, let alone "correct" some of the contours that make a man's head and face look male... Sigh.
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