A New Trend In Art? -- Anthropomorphic Representations of Roadkill
posted on: May 13th, 2007
posted by: gasparin
(Artist, Jessica May, applying gold spray paint to the corpse of a deer)
posted by: gasparin
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I recently came across two mainstream press articles related to anthropomorphizing dead forest creatures for the sake of art. Perhaps it's just a strange coincidence that I find one such account yesterday and then another today, or perhaps this sort of thing is becoming more common. Either way, it caught my attention...
Some of the dead possums and raccoons have been dressed in pet or human baby clothes and have had their claws painted with nail polish. The carcass of a deer has been adorned with gold paint.
I think it says a lot about our alienation from the wild biotic community, of which we're destined to be a part. It expresses the longing that we feel for authentic connected experiences with the rest of 'creation', and simultaneously demonstrates our fumbling attempts to alleviate that longing.
I wonder... would it be considered 'art' if a person were to live by a particular stretch of highway for some time, subsisting solely on a diet of animals killed by automobiles and warmed only by their preserved skins and furs, until such a time that they've accumulated enough animal bones to build an effective barricade, which they use to close the highway?
Would it make the papers? The court records? ... or perhaps just the medical files? An artist using himself as the subject is passé -- or megalomaniacal... but to use himself & his subjective reality as the medium, this is still very troubling in our society. More troubling, I'd think, than using animal carcasses.
Where is the line drawn between 'art' & 'body modification' or 'mind modification' (call that 'insanity', if you'd like)... or the line between 'man' and 'nature'... or any lines at all? Where, for that matter, is the line between question and answer?
courant.com :: Student Tries to Make Roadkill Pretty
Yahoo! odd news:: Dressed Up Dead Fawn Left Near Theater
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(Artist, Jessica May, applying gold spray paint to the corpse of a deer)
"I'm not trying to be any sort of militant activist for animals' rights or anything like that." -- Jessica May
:-|
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the golden deer
A tribute to Maricha?
unpop
Perhaps just a tribute to Marylin Manson + Gwen Stefani + the guy from PETA who visited Jessica May's school the 5th grade year? It's hard to say where some of this shit comes from when we tap into our previously assaulted subconsciouses. I guess we'd have to ask her, but judging from her quotes in the article it seems she would be just as likely to use pink spraypaint as gold.
In the other instance -- that of the anonymous anthropomorphizer in Washington -- the dead fawn wasn't painted at all... just dressed in baby clothes and left in a basket.
These 'art pieces' aren't really all that different from all the anthropomorphic characters we already encounter in our culture; innumerable cartoon characters and corporate mascots and the tales of Uncle Remus immediately come to mind... obviously it's powerful symbolism or corporations and fables wouldn't continually return to it as they do... I guess that's what is so compelling about this story, for me: that these folks were willing to apply that symbolism to our contemporary society and to create art that evoked feelings which even the one identified artist seems quite unable to understand or explain. That makes me wonder... even if they're just doing such things to shock, why does it hold the ability to shock?
This kind of reminds me of
This kind of reminds me of this Chuck Palahniuk book I'm reading right now called Diary. He shines a light on "modern artists" as he sees it...
"This girl, her latest "work" was stuffing a teddy bear with dog shit. She worked with her hands inside blue rubber gloves so thick she could almost not bend her fingers. According to he, beauty was a stale concept. Superficial. A cheat. She was working a new vein. A new twist on a classic Dada theme. In her studio, she had the teddy bear already gutted out, its fake fur spread open autopsy-style, ready to turn into art. Her rubber gloves smeared with brown stink, she could hardly hold the needle and red suture thread. Her title for all this was: Illusions of Childhood."
"Another boy in Misty's class, he was masturbating, trying to fill a piggy bank with sperm before the end of the year. He lived off dividends from a trust fund. Another girl drank different colors of egg temperas, then drank syrup of ipecac that made her vomit her masterpiece. She drove to class on a moped from Italy that cost more than the trailer where Misty grew up."
Although these examples are fictional, I imagine they aren't too far off. The fact that the artist wasn't able to understand or explain their own art doesn't surprise me at all. I think it is a form of shock therapy not only for others, but for the artist as well. Maybe to see if they do it, someone will tell them why they did it?
...clearly
I think that's probably especially true for 'art students'. :-D
In any case, I agree... it's certainly cathartic or therapeutic to dump all those jumbled bits of consciousness into something more tangible. It allows a new level of interaction beyond our continual internal dialogue... and consequently it provides new opportunities for insight into our own mind and culture.
...
Thanks for being the first person to comment here, by the way. Let me know if you see anything broken... I'm still sort of setting everything up exactly as it should be.
love the blog
Glad to see your thoughts put down somewhere other than the pit of darkness(I think you know the place). Keep it up!
re: "artists"
I think wanting to see one's self through others eyes is true of most people. Sometimes though I think it's less of a want for self retrospect and more of a desire to feel appreciated in some way. As a songwriter I love to hear some people's suggestions because they do make me contemplate why I did things a certain way, but others mainly make me want to punch them in the head.
claro...
I suppose that's a big part of why I've decided to work on this site... just to see if anyone cares to hear what I have to say about things that I find interesting or important.
Thanks again for posting your comments... I've been toying with navigation schemes and trying to decide what features to add to the site for way too long, but now you've got me focusing more on the content (which is what I needed to be doing all along).