SOME BELIEVE THAT ART endedin 1987 with Jean-Michel Basquiat, who represented the New York art scene'slast attempt to breath new life into moribund modernity, and that it failed(like Basquiat's life failed him) because the condition was already toograve to hope for recovery. I contend that it is about to come to an endin Berlin or Chicago. These two big cities (one known for its fallen wall,the other for its strong winds) have two artists who are pushing art tothe limit, to its terrible conclusion.

One artist is a doctor by the name of Gunther von Hagens(who lives in Berlin); the other is an art professor by the name of EduardoKac (who lives in Chicago). I had an opportunity to hear them speak inLinz, Austria (Hitler's birth town) during the Ars Electronica Festivalthis fall. I was invited to this festival to speak on the impact that biotechnologyhas had on recent science fiction films, and delivered my lecture justafter these two men made shocking presentations which had appalled manyin the auditorium. "How on earth can you do such a thing?" "Dasist böse!" "What in God's name are you doing?" exclaimedrepelled attendees at these two impossible artists -- and didn't someonefaint? I can't recall the exact details of all that happened during theirlectures, but one thing is certain: One of these artists is going to leadthe world to the end of art, the end of Western history.

The first artist, Eduardo Kac -- a rotund Assistant Professorof Art and Technology at the Art Institute in Chicago -- proposed, duringhis dry and rather long talk, that making art out of living material wasthe next great step forward in his field. He called it "TransgenicArt," which is "a new art form based on the use of genetic engineeringtechniques to transfer synthetic genes to an organism or to transfer naturalgenetic material from one species into another, to create unique livingbeings." Kac has a team of brilliant geneticists to help him realizehis unusual art projects, one of which is to make a fluorescent "K9."He plans to do this by introducing the green fluorescent protein of thePacific Northwest Jellyfish (Aequorea Victoria) into theDNA of a dog, causing its fur to glow in the dark.

I had dinner with Kac the night after his unreal lecture,a lecture which caused many in the audience to raise their voices againsthim and some to storm out of the hall. We sat with his two brainy geneticistsand a brilliant lawyer by the name of Lori Andrews, who has written a bookcalled The Clone Age. The man on the grand piano was playing "AutumnLeaves" at my request. I ordered fish and white wine, and after somepleasantries about this and that, I finally asked Kac, "Why a dog?"

"I don't like to use the word 'dog' or 'pet.' I preferto call them 'family members,'" Kac said, as he cut into his lambchop. "When we call them pets we are denying them the important rolethey play in family life. It is like calling them a slave; it is a wayfor excluding them from the family core."

"If a house was burning," Lori Andrews askedin her brilliant lawyerly way, "would it be a tough Sophie's choiceabout whether to save one's daughter or the Chihuahua? Would one leavetheir estate to GFP-K9 (the name of the glowing dog Kac wants to create)instead of his other relatives? Should one be criminally prosecuted ifthey put that family member to sleep?"

"Yes," I said, agreeing with the lawyer. "Andisn't it worse to make a fluorescent family member, rather than a fluorescentdog?"

"I want people to understand that I'm making a fluorescentK9 out of respect, not because I want to humiliate it. This is art andso I appreciate the K9 as a work of art."

The next speaker that afternoon was Gunther von Hagens,who made a case for using "plastinated" human corpses to makeart. This was the other end of art; the one that used the dead insteadof the living. He explained that "with Gestaltplastination (the processhe invented to preserve human tissue), a new face is bestowed upon death.It takes on an aesthetic-instructive liveliness, which endows the conceptionof death with a certain conciliatory nature." Hagens has close to50 of these dead statues, all of them friends and fans of his work who,when still alive, signed their bodies over to him. Now they are skinnedor sliced or have their insides opened and exposed to the thousands whoattend Hagen's sold-out shows in Germany and Austria.

Some of Hagens' scary sculptures were on display duringthe festival, and when I first saw one I just stared at it, not knowingwhat to think. The statue (the dead man) sat in the middle of a large andcurving hallway; it was sitting in a chair on a raised platform, handson a table, playing chess against a large robotic arm. Its bulging eyesstared at the chess pieces as if it were deep in thought, wondering aboutits next crucial move.

Later, after his talk -- which had hundreds of angry peopledenouncing him as a fraud, as insane, as sick -- I saw Hagens in the hallwaynear his chess-playing corpse. He was talking to a group of admirers orenemies, and though I wanted to hear what he was saying -- there was still15 minutes before my far less controversial talk began -- I was too scaredto approach him. This was a man who had carved nearly 50 fans and friendsinto art, a man who loved to be close to the dead. I didn't want to benear him out of an instinctual fear of death. Or was I lying to myself?Maybe it wasn't death that I feared. Maybe I feared myself. I didn't wantto talk to him because, in a weak moment, I might suddenly fall to hisfeet, saying, "I want to be a work of art when I'm dead. Please plastinateme, herr doktor. Turn me into a permanent statue in death. Pull out myteeth and replace them with better ones (in life I had such bad teeth!).And then, herr doktor, put my dead body next to a high bar table, silverin color, and let me stand there holding in one hand a martini glass, andin the other a bottle of expensive Grey Goose vodka. Let me be frozen inthis happy moment forever."

After years of wondering what the final point and meaningof art would be, we now know for sure. The truth is out there, in Chicagoand Berlin. Instead of an imitation of life, for Eduardo Kac, art has becomelife. Instead of being a defense against the movement of time and the permanenceof death, for Gunther von Hagens, art has become death. After this point,there is nowhere else to go -- we have made it to the end of art.