forlorn
Odd that the Victorians should evidence their empathy for animals by (often killing them and) stuffing them. Then again this anthropomorphizing of our animal friends probably changed the culture and made dioramas of custom stuffed animals, if nothing else, unfashionable.
Case in point is Walter Potter (scroll down) the Cecil B. DeMille of Victorian stuffed animal corpses. Crowd scenes. Multitudes. Scary.
I think his stuff is inspires fascination because its creepy and hard to look away from, partly because it's such so alien to current mores (one simply cannot kill a roomful of kittens and achieve public acclaim these days), and partly because people think it's cute (although they might not admit to it. But Beatrix Potter--no relation it seems--is as popular as ever, and has more than a little in common with Walter. Little critters dressed up in tiny costumes). There was a exhibition on the Victorians at the V&A a few years ago which featured a few Walter Potter dioramas, and they had big clumps of people staring at them when I visited.
The collection was sold at auction in the summer of 2003, and is now in the hands of various collectors. It's a pity it is not in a public museum somewhere in the UK, both as an awful warning to the young on the perils of grotesque sentimentality, and for it's art-historical significance. Damien Hirst (who, incidently, made an effort to save the collection from being broken up) glides through these very same artistic waters, and Walter Potters work has the whiff of an YBA influence. Or maybe it just possesses a certain Britishness.
posted by nick @ 5:15 AM
2 Comments:
In his comments under moufle's photo, Justin Cormack mentions Thomas Grünfeld, an artist who lives in Cologne who makes taxidermied hybrid animals (eg, a fawn with a bulldog's head; an ostrich with a giraffe's neck and head; etc).
Grünfeld sets up his animals (he calls them "Misfits") in elegant plexiglass vitrines that suggest science museum installations. They look scientific, but they're fantastical. Although Grünfeld's work is very new and "hot" (Saatchi collects it), it also recalls ancient hybrid creatures like minotaurs and centaurs.
MassMOCA wrote: "[Grünfeld's] manipulations of taxidermy are so seamlessly prepared as to suggest that they were produced through advances in genetic engineering....Grünfeld taps into the anxiety surrounding both the recent successful cloning of Dolly the sheep and the gruesome failure H.G. Wells envisioned a century ago in 'The Island of Dr. Moreau.' "
And Chimera, have a long art-historical tradition: Gryphons etc. But I agree that the main sense I get from Grünfeld's work is a concern with technology, especially bio-tech manipulations. The Industrial revolution was just begining when Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein, the man-made monster, and we're still uneasy about all the things mankind is learning to do.
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