Father’s testament is his tattooed skin

A man hopes to provide future for his four children by selling his own skin at an auction.

Eric Vinten living in Sidley (East Sussex) is going to put up his skin for auction as a piece of art. The man is famous for the numerous tattoos that cover his body.

Eric says, he would like his skin to be sold at an auction after his death, the instruction was given only concerning the man’s skin. On the whole, Eric wants his mortal remains to be buried in accordance with Christian traditions. The man hopes to provide future for his four children by selling his own skin at an auction.

Eric’s idea won the support of a tattoo artist Jason Williams, who was the main designer of Vinten’s tattoos. The artist thinks that the tattooed skin can be a worthy specimen in any collection and that it would be blasphemy to bury such piece of art with other mortal remains. It is to be added that testaments of this kind are not really very popular in Great Britain, and Eric is likely to face problems with registration of his will. However, some cases are known when exquisitely tattooed skin of some people in Japan and the USA was separated from the body before burials and preserved for the future. The idea of saving people’s tattoos after their death was touched upon in Peter Greenaway’s “Pillow Book”.

Art is becoming more and more anthropological: a scandal about the juridical consequences of operations on dead bodies for the sake of art has just ceased. And now, a testament involving human skin appears in Europe.

Even medicine is not quite accustomed to juridical details that arise as a result of such humane actions as euthanasia or donor aid of human organs. As for art, the question is more acute as to whether or not a mummified part of a dead body is a piece of art, no matter how wonderfully it is decorated. Yelena Kiseleva PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Maria Gousseva

Read the original in Russian: https://www.pravda.ru/culture/2002/07/25/44677.html

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