Extreme Bodies

This is an original, theoretical reflection on the use of the body in art. The book analyses the ways in which the body has always been manipulated: from its relationship with cultural, religious and political institutions to self-mutation. The volume is divided as follows: The Chosen Body: from Beato Angelico to the present day, via some of the most sensational works of Western art. Here, the body represented is a "special body" bearing a considerable number of signs: a sort of iconography of pain, signalling a culture - of the human and divine - that has chosen the marks left on the body by torment and martyrdom. This first part of the book also analyses the tension in works created in a state of imprisonment and in meaningful contemporary performances on the subject of hardship. Body Shock: from Munch to contemporary society, a collection of pictures of the mad, the different and the first hybrids. The second part of the book explores significant experiences in forms of control that have changed over the years: from scars left on the bodies of prisoners, of madmen, of the different (tattoos, scarification, radical haircuts and electroshock therapies) right up to the video-cameras installed in all places of transit and the mapping of individual data. The Foreign Body: this analyses and discusses some of the major practices of body alteration, bordering on self-mutation, via plastic surgery, transplants and implants to the threshold of a generation incapable of distinguishing between real forms and a manipulated reality.