Jan Fabre

Colours: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in excellent condition.
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In Anthropology of a Planet (Marble Thinking model / Study 2) an anatomical-muscular male stands on a human brain with all his muscles exposed (a reference to the renaissance Skinned Man, see image 3). The act of digging into the brain with a tool and the gesture of turning the brain over symbolises the mind controlling the body. But, such as when people act out of passion, the body can also influence the actions of the mind.
The identification of this form of dualism in the causal interaction between the immaterial mind and the material body is attributed to the philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650). With his fundamental statement Cogito Ergo Sum (I think, therefore I am) Descartes was the first (under influence of Neo-Platonism and late Aristotelianism) to clearly identify the mind with consciousness and self-awareness and to distinguish this from the brain. He argued that an organ between the two hemispheres, called by Descartes "the seat of the soul" (now days known as the pineal gland), forms the connection between the intellect and the body.
With Fabre's works in the Palazzo Benzon during the Biennale of Venice exhibition Anthropology of a Planet in 2007 (see image 2 of a similar sculpture), the body-mind dualism of Descartes is questioned once again: can the body of life exist without the corporality of art, or is it the corporality of art that could not exist without the body of life? With this Cartesian question, an obsession for the human brain and the title of the exhibition Jan Fabre searches for the human identity.
In the 17th century writings by Descartes, only humans have this "seat of the soul" in the brain and it is this assertion that distinguishes our species from the animal kingdom. According to modern anthropology humans differ from animals by having developed the ability to see our world in symbols with no natural relationship between the representation of the symbol and the meaning expressed.
With the present work, Jan Fabre shows his audience the symbolic materialisation of the naked male spading his brain for the human identity. Hence the meaning of Anthropology of a Planet is also relevant for the title of the Jan Fabre exhibition during the Biennale: enrichment with symbolic manifestations raises awareness of human identity because, as the epistemologist Gianluca Bocchi (1954) says, "The symbolic is our planetary identity card."

From: G. Di Pietrantonio, Jan Fabre. Antropologia di un pianeta, publication for the 52th Biennale of Venice 2007, p. 68.