Don’t I Look Pretty?
Krishya Nema
SY Bsc
Reading time: 8-9 minutes
Source Source (Thanks Sadhika)
READER DISCRETION ADVISED: Much to your dismay, there are dead animals on display. For your safety, comfort, and enjoyment, you’re advised to keep your favourite teddy bear at arm’s length for the next 6-7 minutes.
When brainstorming ideas for this article, I didn’t expect my mind to wander off to gruesome imagery of fur, teeth, and paws. For the remainder of your time here, I will be discussing Taxidermy as an art form (if you choose to find it so) in the ever-changing landscape of weird things.
Taxidermy, to define it clearly, is the process of preserving, stuffing, and/or mounting animals for display. The process usually involves separating skin from flesh, and further re-stuffing the animal so you can give it the desired shape and posture.
Taxidermy has been practiced across space and time for ritualistic or aesthetic purposes. As scientific methods advanced (yay arsenic!), animal preservation became easier, and taxidermy became widely popularised by the 19th century. While it is instinctive to associate taxidermy with death, taxidermists practicing a specific vein of taxidermy often see the process as bringing animals “back to life.”
This is relevant to understanding the intent behind taxidermy as an art; people who keep dead animals in their freezer have methods to their madness. There are two categories of taxidermy that I am going to present to highlight this distinction in artistic motive.
- Anthropomorphic Taxidermy: If you can grasp personification, the literary device that gives human characteristics to objects, then you can wrap your head around anthropomorphism. In its simplest sense, this form of taxidermy presents animals in human-like forms, whether it is through posturing, dressing, or setting. This form of taxidermy uses the human affinity for things that are “like us” to engage the audience with the specimen. They use a playful whimsy to highlight animals in non-traditional, non-wild settings. Not only is the taxidermist bringing the animal “back to life,” it is also adding another aspect to the “life” of the animal that didn’t exist before, blurring the line between beast, fable, and reality.
What interested me were pieces that emphasised the “deadness” of the animal by placing them in non-animal settings. Case in point:
Maurizio Cattelan, Bidibidobidiboo, 1996
Some argue that anthropomorphism is a way of delivering empathy to animals. A sort of “man meets wild” connection that combats their dehumanization. Pieces like those shown above present death twice, once garnering sympathy at the thought of a squirrel committing suicide, and again, garnering a mixed feeling upon remembering that the squirrel had been dead before it was propped up on the table.
- Abject Taxidermy: Whereas anthropomorphic taxidermy drew us into the world of the animal, abject taxidermy pushes us out. It presents the death of the specimen. Death here is not depicted to be met with sympathy or to entangle your emotions; it magnifies the brutality of death, turning it into a sensation. Instead of building the animal back up, they are deconstructed, and their remains are left to be viewed. This subset of the art form garners strong reactions, usually of disgust, repulsion, and anger. In some cases, displays have violated law and order by practicing animal cruelty or illegally sourcing the specimen (poaching or hunting endangered species). Gore-ish displays further raise ethical concerns regarding our right to mutilate animal bodies.
Put me on display
So far, we’ve explored the relationship between art, death, and humanity in taxidermy. It’s time to shift our perspective to the historical relationships between art and science/nature that explore the purpose that taxidermy serves as an art form.
The initial relationship of art vs. nature in taxidermy is that of “thingness.” But it is incomplete without bringing in the third member of the throuple: colonialism. Much to no one’s surprise, the history of taxidermy finds itself sleeping in the same bed as the history of conquest.
During the 16th-19th century, the only thing more luxurious than hanging a painting over the fireplace was a cupboard full of dead animals, typically found overseas, among other exotic trinkets. In this part of the Victorian era, the Cabinet of Curiosities came to life, giving way to Modern museums by creating a system of categorisation to display items, offering a “Theatre of the world.” The largest of these early curiosity cabinets was established by Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, around 1570 in Florence.
Here, the art of taxidermy lay in presenting the animal as a “thing,” instead of being associated with its anatomy, species, or biology; the specimen was associated with its rarity, unfamiliarity, and wildness. The beasts were posed in a manner meant to invoke awe and draw attention to their foreign nature. In Indian history, the British stole nearly everything from us, including nearly 80,000 tigers between 1875 and 1925. Out of which 43,000 tigers and leopards were taxidermied by the Van Ingen Factor (run by three brothers, Botha, De Wet and Joubert). Like most art forms, taxidermy cannot escape its cruel, morbid, and imperialist past.
Upgraded to a bigger box
“like a dead and useless limb. The words that had been interwoven in the very being of the beast have been unravelled and removed.” – Aloi, Art & Animals
The need for scientific observation of animal objects via the Cabinet of Curiosities paved the way for public exhibitions we know today as museums. Again, the relationship between art vs. nature, art vs. science, and man vs. wild took a turn.
Museums aimed to present the taxidermied animal as a representative of its population. Here we see the shift away from the “creative” aspect of taxidermy, where the “thingness” of the object in the Cabinet of Curiosities is now identified as a “specimen.” The object on display was now associated with its scientific population rather than myth and fable. It was created to be studied, not purely enjoyed.
The taxidermic process, thanks to advanced stuffing and tanning methods, was modified to create more anatomically accurate models. These models were devoid of accents or unique properties because, as we know, the sample must be an accurate representation of the whole, and an outlier just won’t do.
The human perception towards art and nature thus takes a turn where close observation and scientific review create a divide between what we have been shown firsthand and what we imagine. Vanessa Bateman in Why Look at Dead Animals? Taxidermy in Contemporary Art writes, “By preserving an animal as a specimen, it loses its individuality, becoming in a sense the classifying framework within which it is caught—no longer “a lion,” but “Lion – Panthera Leo.””
Out in the Bin
What causes transformation? Obsolescence. Taxidermy art in museums has lost its purpose. Museums do not serve us with a collection of unknown lands. Instead, they preserve a time that has long passed. Specimens on display do not act as “representatives” of their natural population anymore; they are now better seen as a cheeky little word called “simulacral.” Simulacral means “imitation,” but how did we go from viewing specimens as representatives to copies of what ought to be?
No art can be objective; museum displays of dead animals that have been “brought back to life” via taxidermy cannot be seen as perspective-less replicas of wildlife. You cannot put nature in a box without adding or losing aspects that make it natural. Similarly, displays are not without intent or underlying messages. Hence, we see a reversal in seeing specimens as just the animal. Taxidermy displays in museums garner attention not because the animals are new to us; we see them in film and photography all the time. What causes visitors to spend an extra 10 seconds at the display is visual appeal. The construction of the animal catches the initial glance, which further delves into understanding how this piece came to be: Was it hunted? Was it a rare or unnatural creature? Was it part of an imperial collection? Did it feel pain when it died? Was it as vicious as they make it look?
The artistic perspective we had lost through objective observation and replication, we now re-emerge in contemporary art. If you want to explore something even weirder than normal taxidermy, then check out rogue taxidermy!
Zip it up
I had predicted that towards the end of this article, I would be able to see taxidermy in a new, non-creepy light; I was wrong. Taxidermy is weird and creepy, but it is also more profound than I could have ever guessed, and a little cool. Humans have always put themselves in a position of control; certainly, this is no different. Perhaps this exercise of complete control over a creature that cannot “consent” to be modified for our pleasure leaves us squirmish. Perhaps it is our wariness of death, perhaps it is just an aversion to the idea that animals are something for us to “enjoy.” Irrespective of our initial hesitations, understanding the intersection of art in our lives helps us understand the world around us a little better.
The next time you see something weird or unsettling (me sleepwalking into an 8 am class), ask yourself where your disgust stems from. If it happens to be a table full of dead animals playing cards, think “wow! I wonder who’s winning?” and move along.
