by Lori Waxman

FIGURATIVE ART IS DEAD
        Mr. Plastinator, as German professor Gunther von Hagens is known, turns human corpses into sculptures by replacing their bodily fluids with silicone. The artist's latest exhibition, Body Worlds, on view in Berlin and previously shown in Tokyo, Vienna, and Basel, features 25 complete, and completely dead, human bodies, as well as fetuses, body parts, and a horse. Religious leaders have protested the show, holding a requiem mass for the displayed bodies, which more than 6.5 million visitors have seen internationally. Where has von Hagens acquired the 3,200 bodies he says he has plastinated over the last 15 years? The artist maintains they are all from consenting donors, but you've got to wonder. Maybe the backs of German driver's licenses have a box to check for art?

EXTRA BAD KARMA
Suddenly, blowing up the Bamiyan Buddhas is a bad business move. According to the Art Newspaper, the Taliban is implicated in, or at least complicit with, an international trade in looted antiquities and illegal narcotics, the profits of which have helped fuel Afghanistan's 20-year civil war. The plundered antiques, stripped from the Kabul museum and excavation sites the country over, are sold through dealers in Peshawar, the border city in Pakistan; trade is facilitated by Afghanistan's 75 percent share of the world's heroin production. All of which leads art tart to ponder whether or not the destroyed Buddhas were heavily insured.

JAPANESE GOING-OUT-OF-BUSINESS SALE
        Some companies sell off subsidiaries or real estate to pay off creditors. An unnamed Japanese financial institution is making good on bad debts by putting pictures of the seamy side of Paris up for auction. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's "Divan Japonais" has already brought the company $75,000, and a vast archive of the neo-Impressionist's posters, prints, and letters remain up for grabs at Sothebys.com until April 4. This bankruptcy-avoidance sale follows a like one by Japanese trading conglomerate Sumitomo, which recently auctioned off its Andrew Wyeth paintings. The collection, originally amassed by Hollywood producer Joseph E. Levine, was acquired by Sumitomo from Itoman, a Japanese trader which filed for bankruptcy in the early '90s. What's next, van Gogh's "Lillies"? Or Rockefeller Center?

ART TART'S JUNK E-MAIL
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