69 14577 - Zdzisław Beksiński

#6. Pulling Out Hair, Nails and Teeth to Create a Sculpture of the Artist’s Own Body

When Japanese artist Hananuma Masakichi found out that he was dying of tuberculosis in 1885, he did what any of us would do in that situation: He created a perfect replica of his body to leave to the woman he loved, as a reminder of that swell guy she once dated who was nuts.
                      
                            He’s the original RealDoll.

Masakichi worked in a room full of adjustable mirrors to document and sculpt every inch of his body, right down to the veins and the pores, using between 2,000 and 5,000 little strips of dark wood joined together with pegs, glue and dovetail joints. No seams can be seen, even with a magnifying glass. No nails were used in the sculpture … except for the artist’s actual fingernails.

No, seriously. Here they are:

                   

 If you’re going to be stuck with one hand gesture for eternity, it might as well be “The Shocker.”

In order to make his duplicate as accurate as possible, Masakichi began pulling out his own hair and nails and stuck them at the same points on the sculpture, going as far as to drill tiny holes on its surface to represent the exact pores he’d just grabbed the little hairs from. And yep, that includes the pubes. Reportedly he even pulled out his own teeth and put them on his double, which is especially insane because you can barely see them through its slightly open mouth.

                    

                           Masakichi on the right, statue on the left. Maybe.

Once this death-fueled monument to his own insanity was finished, Masakichi held an exhibition where he would stand next to the now clothed sculpture, daring people to guess which of the two was the artist. Hint: It’s the one who keeps scratching his crotch every five minutes because he just pulled out his freaking dong hair.

And then, after all that effort, the tuberculosis didn’t even have the decency to kill him: Instead, his girlfriend left him (presumably for the statue) and he died 10 years later, broke, unhappy and maybe even toothless. The statue was eventually bought by Robert Ripley from Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for the astonishingly large sum of $10 in the early 20th century.

This is actually amazing. Albeit a little weird, but hey, most artistic people are.

(Source: caghain)