forlorn

What do Damien Hirst and Beatrix Potter have in Common?

forlorn
Originally uploaded by moufle, and taken in the University Museum of Zoology at Cambridge:

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.