Taxidermy: Objet d’Art or Makes-Me-Wanna-Barf?

A new shop has opened in my suburb. It’s this sort of wine/fine foods/scented body lotion/gifts for epicureans kind of joint, where everyone runs around in aprons describing things variously as ‘gorgeous’  and ‘naughty’. And recently, they’ve decorated their space by sticking a giant taxidermied ram in the window. This means that if you’re walking one way, you get a view of the Majestic Horns etc, but if you’re coming from the other direction you get a good look at the dun, matted wool of its immediate ass-area. Not ideal, I would have thought. 

Any way, the point is – are vintage taxidermied animals some kind of cool postmodern  design accent that you would happily stick in your living room? Or are they still to reminiscent of the room full of stuffed birds of prey in Psycho?

Lately, I’ve seen bars with stuffed peacocks, a home-beautiful-style magazine spread where a bear rug (a freaking BEAR RUG) was hailed as chic, and seen a dedicated dog owner produce a dusty taxidermy of one of her previous best friends.

The taste for taxidermy has been around for a long time. In the nineteenth century, when interest in natural history soared, there was a fashion not just for stuffing one’s beloved pets, but for purchasing exotic stuffed animals from Africa or Asia (the days before conservation….) to prove one’s cosmopolitanism. There were even ‘theatrical’ taxidermied pieces, where animals would be shown fighting, or a lion would be poised pouncing on a gazelle, etc etc. 

Then, of course, there were the more, ahem, practical objects….think of the elephant’s foot umbrella stand, the aforementioned bear rug or, more recently, the decanters made out of squirrels:

One of the most famous taxidermy artists of all time has to be Walter Potter, a Victorian gent who would amass the bodies of birds, kittens, mice, squirrels etc and turn them into tableaux; some of the more famous of these include ‘The Original Death and Burial of Cock Robin’ and ‘The Kittens’ Wedding’. They are quite amazing in their grotesquerie; if you’re interested, you can get a squiz at a wide selection of Walter Potter’s works here.  In the meantime, here’s a picture of the Kitten’s Wedding, which still gives me the heebie jeebies:

The sale of Potter’s works as individual pieces in 2003 raised a lot of questions about the value of taxidermy-art. Contemporary artist Damien Hirst apparently offered one million pounds for the collection, but was rebuffed by Bonhams. Hirst (himself an artist who works with the medium of taxidermy…who could forget The Kingdom, his dead shark floating in a tank of formaldehyde? Let alone the calves, sheep, foals etc etc) claims that the piecing off of Potter’s oeuvre devalues the collection. But, especially when viewed in conjunction with Hirst’s own art, it raises an interesting question – when did taxidermy stop being an eccentric Victorian curiosity, and start becoming fashionable as artistic decorative object/fine art again?

 When vintage rabbit’s foot jewellery (which seems to be everywhere) starts looking less like a statement of one’s Edgy Attitude, man, and starts looking like mainstream fashion…you gotta wonder. 

What do you guys reckon? Is taxidermy a Hottie or a Nottie? And can you believe I managed to work a Paris Hilton reference into this post?