SPRING 2019
Dear Whom It May Concern,
- ARTHI 3652 Taxidermy and Contemporary Art
Whom to Protect
Expressing the concept and or image of death and the criticism of human nature and or race itself, became prevalent in the world of contemporary art, after the rise of the posthumanism, a "thematics of the decentering of the human in relation to either evolutionary, ecological, or technological coordinates" (Wolfe xvi) To illustrate these themes, artists began to not only used several topics which used to be tabooed and or rather suppressed in society, such as representation of death and shameful history of the mankind, which induces discomfort and horror to the viewers.
Damien Hirst's works as an example, the images that contemporary artists portray in their works of art, are often unpleasant and far from beautiful imageries of classical arts, which mankind is more used to - art as "some kind of beautiful luxury, something to enjoy in museums or something special to use as a precious decoration in the best parlour" (Gombrich 19) Therefore understanding and appreciating works of modern art, became more incomprehensible unless one knows the context - historical background - of the work: this pursuit of odd aesthetics in 'ugliness' and distress in works of contemporary art, however, have been making the viewers and society to confront the history of mankind, how they gained power over nature and knowledge by selfishly sabotaging the nature.
There have been countless artists who tried to depict this representation of 'death' and the anthropocentric history of mankind through using cadavers - especially taxidermized animals - as objects and tools in works of art throughout history like Meret Oppenheim and Salvador Dalì, yet it is Damien Hirst, who is well-recognized as the artist who uses taxidermies in art. The depiction of 'death' in art in a matter of fact, has always existed since the prehistoric era, the drawings of the Lascaux cave for instance; however, the artists began to explicitly portray the representation of death mainly focused in the negative emotions and feelings, after the emergence of the vanitas still-life in the seventeenth centuries. Vanitas painting, originally in still-life, featuring items like "skulls, clocks, burning candles.... suggest[ing] the passing of worldly pleasures and the finality of death, [but they also] abundantly celebrate the pleasures of art and life" (Barolsky 38) On the other hand, even though Hirst is also posting humanistic and in regard of creating representation of 'death' through his works, yet it tends to appear rather violent, uncomfortable and controversial, due to his use of panoptic display and of botched taxidermies.
Hirst's direct engagement to "the problem of anthropocentrism and speciesism... must change" (Wolfe xix) through use of animal taxidermy and choice of topics in his works of art seemed too literal and contradicting in a way; the artist criticizes the history of mankind and its relationship with nature through using animal cadavers or taxidermies as representation of the humans' "fatal desire to represent" (Haraway 25); Hirst, as a human being as well, his use of taxidermies as a tool, also is such an anthropocentric attitude and decision. Yet the False Idol,(Fig. 1) from Hirst's Natural History series, is one of the best examples of contemporary art showing its focus on the representation of death and human nature through use of taxidermy and its context, without being grotesque but sublime and aesthetically pleasing, despite of the presence of fabricated cadaver and historically disturbing format resembling panopticons.
The False Idol, created in 2008, is consist of "a white calf with golden hooves, encased in a gold vitrine and preserved in formaldehyde" ("Hirst's False Idolat ARK") emphasizing the status of the animal 'cattle' or 'cow' as the icon of sacrifice throughout humans' cultures and religions, and its purpose as a source of protein, property, and as one of the major species of livestock through domestication - "the modification of a plant or animal species such that the traits that are most beneficial to human uses" (Fuentes 105) changing its physical form and behaviors. By specifically using the species 'cattle' to taxidermy, and a title clearly indicating the allegorical aspect of the animal cattle, Hirst highlights the egotistical nature of mankind.
First of all, in order to understand why the use of taxidermy as a tool of knowledge and power over nature becomes problematic, one must know what taxidermy is, and its history: taxidermy is about "render[ing] animals immortal, and through that immortality they exist apart from lived reality while still physically lurking in this world" (Poliquin 108) Unlike mummification, taxidermy is about "arrang[ing] skins ... to manipulate them[animals] so as to retain a lifelike form after death" (Morris 8) which is quite the opposite of post-humanistic concept and accepting of the cycle of life and death.
If one assumes the 'hominins' as the origin of human race, the mankind has been constantly evolved from using teardrop hand ax to hunt and gather for survival - to 'homo sapiens sapiens' using a piece of plastic or paper as currency and live in the most complex social structure and hierarchy; only the way humans chose to do in order to become who they are now, involved a lot of destruction of the nature. For instance, the hominins lived in a scavenging society, using stone tools to cut meat from the remains of dead animals left by a predator, yet realizing that they need more meat, which is directly related to survival, they began to ""power scavenge"... kill early [and protect from] the predators... throwing stones at the predator [to protect their kills]" (Fuentes 69) The homos became more dominant and powerful as their tools evolved, which also led to the "endless human quest to achieve and place within the natural world" (Poliquin 198) until they became the ultimate predator on Earth.
After accomplishing the security of food sources through domestication - reshaping animals and plants - mankind began to focus on passing down its bits of knowledge to next generations. Identifying other species as preys or predators was crucial in survival, and one of the examples of humans' attempt to preserve their pieces of knowledge of survival skills, was through 'making art'; humans are sensitive to visuals in nature, and art has been one of the most efficient ways of communicating and understanding ideas regardless of cultural and racial backgrounds. For instance, the cave paintings of the Lascaux Cave from 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, one can still identify animals or its species.
The Shaft of the Dead Man(Fig. 2), one of the cave paintings, besides the historical and artistic significances of this painting, the fact that someone from 2019 still can identify a bull and a person is depicted in this painting, that both are in immediate danger without explanation, is remarkable. Unlike homos, who had to physically encounter to gain knowledge, humans no longer require actual confrontation with animals to learn what they are, thanks to the cave painters, who not only allowed their people to be cautious with bulls at all times and to understand the concept of death, but also the homo sapiens sapiens. Acknowledging the significance of the Shaft of the Dead Man is important since the context Hirst tries to point out in the False Idol, basically originates from these cave paintings.
As one can observe in the Shaft of the Dead Man, the species 'cattle' has been close with the survival of mankind for a very long time - they had "magical functions, sometimes oracular, sometimes sacrificial" (Berger 4) As it is portrayed in this painting, bulls were one of the major sources of food to humans, however, dangerous enough to kill them as well. Bulls became something humans desired - as a great source of nutrients for survival, in other words, security and possibility for reproduction, but its power, the most. Being strong meant having higher chance of surviving and reproducing; in the paintings of Lascaux Cave, bulls are illustrated a lot bigger than human-like figures, divine, powerful and full of energy, indicating homos' admiration towards stronger being: animals "first entered the human imagination as meat ... as messengers" (Berger 4) which later develops as the concept of sublimity, science, and twisted ways of absorbing and collecting powers through killing and dominating the nature, such as making taxidermy.
Having artworks such as paintings or sculptures depicting powerful beings were effective in preserving and inheriting knowledge, however, their unavoidable lack in realism; physical confrontation with animals in nature became sparse as mankind evolved, and the indication of power shifted from having the physical capability to having access to knowledge. Artists pushed themselves to break the limitation of two-dimensional space by creating perspectives, techniques, and materials, which allowed people to be more engaged to nature, yet also to realize that what they see through artworks are merely representations of reality, since one could only illustrate what they see and what they 'want' to see; many artists are engaged in "produc[ing] a very original and personal approach" (Aloi 20) and this tendency was also involved in making of taxidermies as well.
As technology developed humans were able to expand the boundaries and gain more knowledge about nature, yet again, the desire of mankind for having lasting manifestation of power in order to secure its position as superior, motivated them to do so by collecting objects including taxidermies, "the art most suited to the epistemological and aesthetic stance of realism" (Haraway 34) which involved countless killings of animals (and other humans) to own the most pristine forms of certain species, thinking that one gains knowledge of the world more than others do, therefore becomes more powerful, by possessing the best ones.
Taxidermy allowed the emergence of natural science as well, however, also became one of the most anthropocentric objects of the history of mankind, which manipulated and changed the representation and concept of the 'nature' once and for all. Therefore, coming back to the False Idol, even though both Hirst's work and the Shaft of the Dead Man are depicting same species of animal 'cattle' as 'sacred being', the reason why only Hirst's, or even any modern artworks involving use of animal parts and or taxidermies become problematic, is because it forces the viewers to not only feel discomfort from facing explicit representation of 'death' but also to confront the history of mankind against nature.
Some may criticize the simplicity of the bull in the Shaft of the Dead Manas 'primitive', however, it was genuinely depicted from a feeling of admiration, as a powerful, divine being; the beautiful white calf embellished with gold, one of the most precious materials of humans, on the other hand, accentuates its sacredness through its unrealistically perfect proportions and purely white fur, yet is only a representation of anthropocentric imagery of a cattle as transcendent being. So, despite its breathtakingly beautiful appearance, viewers cannot simply admire beauty of Hirst's white calf, since they become confused by mixed feelings of appreciating beauty, disgust from realizing the 'deadness' and insecurity of the human races; Hirst made sure to make the viewers feel so, by using an absurdly literal title, the False Idol.
Hirst's signature style of using panoptic display resembling 'containers' and or panopticons, inflames the controversy as well; the idea of panopticon, 'controlling the gaze', originally referred to the "surveillance structure designed for full vision" (Gehring 47) for prisons, but became the "non-visual, anocular and faceless operation of power" (Gehring 49) which was adopted and widely used in establishing museum display. By adopting the sense of safety from maintaining distance from the 'prisoners', and or 'danger' - in Hirst's works, keeping a distance between the viewers and his taxidermized animals by containing objects in 'container-like' structures - the viewers can enjoy the disturbing and unwanted ideas like death without putting oneself in danger. However, his use of the panoptic display is as self-centered and anthropocentric as the concept of taxidermy, therefore raising the question of who is protecting whom from what, and whether Hirst as an individual, is entitled to criticize the viewers and society, or not.
Hirst's use of cadavers in his artworks appears presumptuous and anthropocentric, despite of his artworks being well-recognized as one of the pinnacles of modern arts since he also is destroying the natural cycle of life, death, and the life after death, by creating taxidermies without having the consent of animals. At the end, Hirst is all about creating spectacles, and the white calf of the 'False Idol', is an object, a 'tool' Hirst chose to use, like Descartes' "famous doctrine of the 'animal machine' ('bête-machine')... 'animals are without feeling or awareness of any kind'" (Cottingham 551) seeing animals as mere parts of machines.
As previously mentioned, works of art have been one of the most effective ways of preserving and inheriting bits of knowledge: considering the paintings of Lascaux Cave still existing as an invaluable artifact for studying the history of mankind and nature even after thousands of years to this date, artworks can influence not just the survival of human race but other species as well. Humans are capable of creating artworks, in other words, can control or manipulate the representation of pretty much anything and everything: art has been one of the most widely used and effective forms of propaganda throughout history, such as Napoleon portrayed always taller than he actually was in Jacques-Louis David's paintings of Napoleon, in order to secure his position as a leader; the Spanish Civil War gained attention of the world for anti-war movement, by a painting of Pablo Picasso, the Guernica (Fig. 3)
Taking this influential quality of art and Adam Gopnik's comment on how "shocked people who claimed not to have been shocked by anything at all since the early sixties, and caused a scandal of a sort... almost touching in its re-creation of an earlier and more embattled era in the history of modern art" (Koons 23) into account, the way of artists of present time becoming more obsessed with creating imagery that will actually 'shock' the audience with a high threshold in graphic contents, is inevitable. However, if artists and their works are powerful in shaping and constructing the nature, which is directly related to the way future generations conceive the representation of nature and the human race, Hirst's controversial artworks that are violent, anthropocentric and subjugating in nature, is questionable in regards of what kind of 'knowledge' and survival skills he will be responsible for the contribution, especially considering the most common way of learning about nature is through processed images and representations.
Mankind became more distant from nature as they 'evolved'; animals have been kicked out of their natural habitats, and humans' chance of physically interacting with nature has become rarer. As Evon Hekkala, a museum research associate, mentioned, one of the intentions of making taxidermies and dioramas were to give "an opportunity for people to see a world that most didn't get to travel to" ("Discoveries in Diorama") The desire of gaining power through collecting, is in the nature of human being and cannot be extracted, because it originates from basic survival instinct as a living creature; the hominins were 'scavengers', they were merely different from apes until they learned how to use tools, and their lives depended on "securing food sources [and] reduc[ing] the possible competition with other species" (Fuentes 54) Humans had to accumulate sources - including knowledge for survival, to avoid 'death' - except they went too far for to avoid competitions with other species.
People no longer need to physically travel around in order to gain knowledge: one can simply look through countless photographs and videos to know what 'cattle' is, in several forms, for instance; one can also visit zoos and natural history museums to learn about cattle as well. However, the images of cattle, or dioramas, or zoos, are processed and fabricated by humans, in other words, are representations of nature, different from the reality: one of the reasons why viewers find the white calf of the False Idol'beautiful' despite of its context and lifelessness, is because the appearance of Hirst's taxidermized calf satisfies the essential elements of visually and aesthetically pleasing representation of the species, 'cattle', only exists in the mind of humans.
Likewise, the bull portrayed in the Lascaux Cave, is a representation of bulls at least 15,000 years ago, created by homos, ancestors of the homo sapiens sapiens; neither Hirst's taxidermized calf nor Lascaux Cave's bull are an accurate representation of the species 'cattle'. Yet what makes Hirst'sFalse Idolmore problematic in the world of art, is that the intention of Hirst manipulating the representation of cattle, exclusively in order to prove his point to viewers and to society.
Hirst stated that ""the artist [is] looking for universal triggers... want it to have an immediate impact, and... to have deep meanings as well. I'm striving for both"" (Callaway 231) and he surely succeeded in having immediate responses towards his works of art and 'deep meanings' at the same time through the work False Idol,making viewers and society to confront the history of mankind and how they gained power over nature and knowledge, by using speculative taxidermy. Despite the anthropocentric aspects and debatable decisions of Hirst's in his works and other contemporary artworks, as Jung said, this uncomfortable history of mankind and its selfish nature, is the 'darkness conscious' since one cannot "become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious" (Jung 335)
Figure 1. Damien Hirst, False Idol(2008)
Figure 2. Unknown, The Shaft of the Dead Man(17AD)
Figure 3. Pablo Picasso, Guernica(1937)
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