Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center
One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20004-3027
T 202/691-4000
The Art of Life
“The Art Is Alive” by Emily Voigt, in Isotope, Fall–Winter 2009.
A dinner party in Paris. Frog on the menu. It sounds pretty straightforward until the catch: In attendance is the frog himself, still alive. The meal being served—coin-sized frog steaks—is tissue cloned from the guest of honor. It’s not the future; it’s a piece of performance art titled Disembodied Cuisine. Welcome to the weird world of bioart.
“The idea of manipulating life in the name of aesthetics is nothing new,” says Emily Voigt, a writer based in New York City, but recently, art in which biological materials are used “has been growing rapidly in popularity and ambition.” Bioart is the catchall label for works of this kind, which range from bacteria that have been genetically engineered to glow in bright colors to a torn leaf repaired with grafted-on human scab cells. Many artists who 10 or 20 years ago were tinkering with silicon and circuits are today playing with cells and DNA.
To read the rest of this article, please consider becoming a WQ subscriber, which allows online access to the current WQ issue as well as archive content. Other access options are below.
Research, browse, and discover more than 35 years of articles, essays, and reviews by preeminent scholars and writers. Our searchable archive of back issues is free for WQ subscribers.
 |
 |
 |
Subscribe today
to the WQ Online
and receive immediate access
to the WQ archive for a full year.
Subscribe Now
In Defense of Capitalism
"Recovering the Case for Capitalism” by Yuval Levin, in National Affairs, Spring 2010.The Tea Party’s Short Sip
“The Tea Party Jacobins” by Mark Lilla, in The New York Review of Books, May 27, 2010.Judges for Sale
“Economic Crisis and the Rise of Judicial Elections and Judicial Review” by Jed Handelsman Shugerman, in Harvard Law Review, March 2010.