Body of criticism greets artist's human display

Not since Damien Hirst took a chainsaw to a dead cow has there been such an uproar over an assemblage of preserved flesh. Yesterday, the man behind an art exhibition of human corpses defended himself against claims he is presiding over a modern-day equivalent of the Victorian freak show.

Gunther von Hagens, the German professor of anatomy who invented the "plastination" technique of tissue preservation, said his harshest critics are usually those who have never seen his anatomically-explicit exhibits.

Critics of the the Body Worlds exhibition of cadavers and human organs failed in their attempts to prevent its opening today at the Atlantis Gallery, set in an old brewery in London's Brick Lane. A last-minute ruling by the Department of Health found the organisers needed no licence under the Anatomy Act.

Professor von Hagens described the 26 bodies and 180 plastinated organs as educational and enlightening. He welcomed schoolchildren and their parents to come and marvel at the way their bodies are composed of flesh, bone and sinews. He also announced a British man has offered to donate his own body to the exhibition – after his death. The man joins a list of more than 4.500 "donors" who want their mortal remains preserved as a work of science – if not art.

Each corpse is preserved by a technique patented by Professor von Hagens. It involves replacing the natural body fluids with a solid plastic which both preserves the tissues and gives rigidity, enabling the corpse and organs to be displayed in any position.

A flayed man with his spine and brain exposed sits at a chess table contemplating his next move, a pregnant woman is lying like a reclining nude only with her womb slit open to reveal an eight-month-old foetus. Another flayed corpse has a sheet of his own skin draped on his arm like a garment.

Professor von Hagens, immaculately dressed like a German expressionist in black fedora and tight-fitting suit, described his "plastinates" as if they are frozen at a point between death and decay.

"Plastination stops decomposition and dehydration so completely that the insides of bodies cease to be objects of revulsion. Observers are not bothered by any kind of offensive odours," he said. Individual organs or whole bodies are first embalmed in formaldehyde before they are washed and bathed in acetone – an organic solvent that is slowly replaced by a liquid and, later on, a solid plastic.

The technique's "decisive trick", according to Professor von Hagens, is to use a form of vacuum impregnation in the final stages that forces the liquid plastic into the last tissues and cells of the corpse to produce a body that is completely immune to the vagaries of biological decay.

Having preserved a corpse in this way, its internal organs, connective tissue, nerves, blood vessels and bones can be posed for the education – or amusement – of the viewer.

Forget the mundane "exploded views" of the anatomical text book, the von Hagens plastinates have "open door" views, where you can look inside the deepest recesses of the body, and "open drawer" views where successive layers are pulled vertically and horizontally to reveal the human body's astonishingly intricate architecture.

Sarah Simblet, a teacher at Oxford's Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, said that plastination is in the long traditions of art and anatomy, which share a common interest in the human body.

"It's the first time it has been truly possible to open out the body into space. Many have attempted this but none has truly succeeded," Ms Simblet said.

Franz Josef Wetz, professor of philosophy at the College of Education in Schwabisch Gmund, in Germany, also defended the Body Worlds exhibition on the grounds it should be for the public themselves to decide on whether or not to attend. "I'm astonished and irritated that this exhibition has run into such big obstacles in the UK where liberalism originated," Professor Wetz said.

Although the public is often accused of seeking voyeuristic thrills by gawking at freakish spectacles, this is not one of those occasions, he said.

"We may be highly developed [creatures] but we still remain vulnerable creations ... I cannot understand why only scientists should have access to the internals of the body," Professor Wetz said.

As to dark suggestions that some of the bodies displayed in Brick Lane were not given with the owner's full and informed consent, Professor von Hagens said that the rumours were without foundation. "I can assure you there are no body specimens here without consent. I have enough bodies, it is not necessary to snatch bodies or steal them," he said.

Of course, whether enough live humans turn up to see the exhibition is how Professor von Hagens will now be judged.