TAXIDERMY.
After looking very briefly at some of the histroy of taxidermy, it lead me into current taxidermists and probably the most well known and contemporary artists that uses taxidermy, POLLY MORGAN, i fell in love with her work straight away.
Polly Morgan, born 1980 is a british artist sits at the forefront of contemporary taxidermy, her work is shocking, her animals look alive and realistic. However they do not sit in their natural surroundings.Her work is about the corruption of nature,it shows octopus coming out of fox carcasses, it places animals in scenery they are not exoected to be in, it removes all sterotypes and associations.
she gives ideas of life and death but in a subtle way.
All the animals Morgan uses have been donated to her once they have already died, so no animals are harmed to make her art work. It could almost be seen as recycling their bodies.
After looking at Patricia Piccinini and her linking the use of animals within science and art I moved forward in my research into sciences that are considered art.
I first stumbled onto TAXIDERMY, and began to research how taxidermy was used through historyand how it changed etc
I started with Charles Wilson Peale ( 1741-1827), an American taxidermist, he used taxidermy more as a science than an art. he placed his animals in their natural surroundings so audiences would understand how they lived.
This lead me to look at Carl Akeley (1846-1926) who also set his animals in a scientific way in their natural surroundings, he improved the methods of taxidermy which lead into Walter Potter ( 1835-1918) who was a taxidermist from around the same time ” the golden age of taxidermy”. however Potter did not display his taxidermied animals natural, he personified them, dressing them in clothes, giving them expressions and displaying them at tea parties and in schools. This would have shocked at the time so fall under shock art also, whereas again perhaps less shocking now, especially as the skill used in potters work was somewhat low. people said he was an awful taxidermist so perhaps removed the effect of reality as his animals almost looked like teddy bears. They were unrealistic and not believable and so lost their shock factor.
PATRICIA PICCININI is another sculptor that involves anthropomorphism, I find her work slightly more sickening, in the sense that she heavily hints at cross species breeding, as her sculptures are clearly hybrids of non human animals and humans. She makes these sculptures to tackle issues within medicine.
She uses occasional horse hair but no other animal parts. she still shocks and yet does not harm any animals.
I then moved on to look at ANTHROPOMORPHISM within art as a different way to onvolve animals in contemporary art.
Beth Cavener Stichter is one of my favourite sculptors, she uses no animal part within her sculpting, however her work is still shocking, yet beautiful, and highly delicate and detailed.
She works with anthropomorphism, a form of personification, a mixture of human and animal. She makes animals with human expressions and sometimes human genetalia. This gives us a sense of empathy with the animals when they are depicted in pain, as they are showed withi feelings we can see and therfore imagine and feel.
Also, i feel by using human genetalia on the animals, it brings an uncomfortable feeling with thoughts of hybrids and the inter species breeding.
Its a clever way to shock i feel, without using animals.
I then looked at Chris Ofili, who did not use animals within his art but animal feces, elephant feces to be precise, which again in this day and age is hardly shocking. He made it shocking by using it within a piece of art also featuring the virgin mary, he claimed to “bridge the sacred and the profane ” (ww.tate.org.uk/whats/on/tate-britain)
The work was called sick, even though no harm came to any animal.
This is what interested me, he managed to shock using animal materials, and yet no animals were harmed, but he still gained the exposure he wanted.
