Aloi, Art & Animals Chapter 1 (1-24).
John Singleton Copley, “Watson and the Shark” (1778)
Jannis Kounellis, “Untitled (12 horses)”
Joseph Bueys, “I Like America and America Likes Me”
Kira O’Reilly, “Falling Asleep with a Pig”
Aloi, Art & Animals Chapter 1 (1-24).
John Singleton Copley, “Watson and the Shark” (1778)
Jannis Kounellis, “Untitled (12 horses)”
Joseph Bueys, “I Like America and America Likes Me”
Kira O’Reilly, “Falling Asleep with a Pig”
Aloi and Berger both point out that the way we relate to animals today is through representation, and representation is inevitably inauthentic. Animals are “framed” and “presented” in a certain context, whether it be that of a zoo, wildlife documentary, show on Animal Planet or art exhibit. There seems to be an implication in Aloi’s argument that the ubiquity of animal imagery in modern culture is a kind of compensation for a lost engagement with animals. John Berger argues that we need animals because, in their difference, they confirm our humanness. In modern culture, however, animals are marginalized by the workings of capital. This means that we can no longer see animals and so they can no longer look back at us. Consequently, we surround ourselves with mediated animals and representations of animals, even if those representations are of “real” animals like Damian Hirst’s shark, or Kira O’Reilly’s pig. Does this argument make sense to you, and do you agree that we’ve lost touch with our connection to the animal world that defines us as human? This also brings us back to the point Renwick made in class. How do the technologies we use today structure our relations to animals, and our conceptions of them. Surrounded by the virtual, are we beginning to fetishize the “real”?
The idea of the actual object becoming a representation when put in a “foreign” context is well established. Living creatures pose a trickier paradigm. A live animal can only become a representation for something else once we overcome it’s presence. To clarify, if you were standing in a gallery with a moose, you could only think about what the moose signifies after the any threat or primary interaction had been mediated. For most of the pieces discussed, glass or other barriers intervened. Even a wildlife expert, who enters an animal’s habitat, has his fear and instincts mediated by research, training, and repeated exposures. In this regard, could one posit that phobias present a way of viewing an animal without representation. It may also serve that obsessions and furias present a subject (animals included) in a visceral manner that is free from cultural constructs. These irrational modes of thought may be a novel window to view those who we ascribe a lack of reason.
after reading this chapter, I could not help but think of these videos
Let’s call this Orcas in Three ways.
#1:
#3:
#2:
I’m struck by the uncomfortable questions that Holler and Trockel’s Ein Haus posit, and their parallels to our conscious engineering of food and our passive ‘engineering’ of viruses and bacteria. Domesticated animals are not the only life forms that have been drastically genetically altered through ‘unnatural’ evolution caused by humans, and it makes me feel that last week’s discussion regarding the inevitable destruction of animals that would be caused by our severing ties with them, was spot on. (Here, we could insert a lively discussion on whether our purposeful manipulation of other animal’s genetic code is unnatural or on the contrary, the definition of natural). I think this Ein Haus lends credence to the idea that once we do not need animals for food or service, we will somehow destroy them. How can we not, when the animal does not even exist outside of ourselves? However, I also think that we are not doing any species a favor by keeping it around. The individual pig does not care whether the pig as a species continues to exist; it cares about its own suffering. So, while I agree with last week’s argument by H. that we need to keep using animals for the animals to keep existing, I do not think this has any weight in the moral dilemma of the right to use animals.
This assumes humans outnumber animals, and will continue to do so. But most parts of the world are inhabited not by humans, but by animals, insects, fish & birds. Non-human life forms seem a lot more adaptable than humans, and if global warming continues, the planet may be inhabited only by non-human life forms. There’s one species of human, around 950,000 species of insects, 30,000 species of fish, & 10,000 new species of animals “discovered” every year. We only feel like we’re in charge.
Our relationship with animals, beginning with prehistoric man, has evolved considerably over time, but the use of animals as a product to enhance human life has remained constant. It is hard to imagine a time where death was a continuous threat, and one precipitated by animals. It is also hard to imagine that while participating in such a turbulent relationship with animals, we still depended on them for food, clothing, and tools. Throughout history, animals, and images of animals have been used in art and ritual, and their presence in ceremony suggests the respect humans had for them. The admiration that early humans had for the power and beauty of animals is what has not remained constant throughout time. Our dominance over the animal kingdom has contributed to new uses of animals in society. Aloi comments on Richard Serra’s use of animals in his artwork: “The animal is perceived as a material to be used in the work of art, like pigments, or a simple found object, like any other inanimate object that could become part of any artistic composition.” Here the animal is equated to a product produced for consumption and not as something to be revered and respected as another living thing. Hirst’s shark is an example of how perverted our relationship with animals has become, not only does he use the shark as a commodity but, “as a “tongue-and-cheek self-referential comment about the artist’s own approach to making art, which relies heavily on commoditization and market power.” The animal, once perceived as a living creature capable of yielding life and death, is now something to be used figuratively to express our personality traits or methods of working. The animal once feared and respected is now a representation of the wild we once belong to.
Early on in “Caught up in Representation” Aloi begins to discuss “Untitled” (12 Horses) by Jannis Kounellis. As she begins to mentions a horses role in racing it gives us something to compare these 12 horses to. They are not thoroughbreds, they appear to be work horses, and that is the reality of their biology. Some would see these horses as not much to look at because of their mutt quality. The racing horse is an interesting topic on Human/Animal, as we have yet to look at animals in terms of sport- I lived near one of the east coast’s most famous racetrack for horses for about a year. I worked as an artists assistant for a man who owned an art gallery in town. Selling exclusively his work, most of it was very graphically painted and loud, images of jazz musicians and horses. As an expert marketer given his location and suave, he cleverly mass produced paintings and printed out reproductions faster than he put a brush to canvas, and very quickly and easily reduced the idea of the race track horse to a tourist token for the well endowed. People who attend the track every year are people whom have generally an excessive amount of money and won property in the area, even a set area at the track where patrons always sit. At the track itself, everyone else is put out on the lawn surrounding the track- the class divide is so alive and well. Most of these people involved in race track culture would always say “I love horses” and form bonds with the animals much like a teenager loves a pop star until the next big thing comes around. What they failed to consider is the rigorous training and altering of their bodies, the synthetic performance enhancements forced into them, and their usually horrible fate once they fall behind.
The audience/patrons of the track fetishize what they see as real in a very un-real way (the groomed horses, the whiteness, the excess of social formality contrasted with the physical separation of poorer patrons, the excitement of gambling, the alcohol, the gated off main track and warm up tracks, the corruption of rigged races) while as Aloi might say “keeping a safe distance” and sitting back and collecting individual profits. While I don’t approve of the abuse and killing of animal bodies, I do appreciate the conversation it brings into the gallery about animals and our dysfunctional relation to them- As Richard Serra used found objects that happened to be already dead animals- I think this was a good way to bring animals into the artistic conversation in a way that happened to be cruelty free, but the combination of the taxidermy with live animals remains conflicting among my values about animals in art. If something happens in a gallery it has a “the boy who cried wolf” metaphor/story type of response, and no one hears the animal in which has no voice to cry. How do conversation over animals in art change (if at all) our collective thought and then our material actions concerning animals, and then how might using animals in art or sport transcend profit?
Whether we live alongside animals or only know them from a distance, I think our tendency to project and anthropomorphize remains constant. This tendency appears to be constant throughout time as well. I’m not sure if it would be accurate to say that we had more reverence for animals in the past than we do now. Our belief that human-animal relationships were better “way back when” may originate in our inclination to romanticize the past. There is a long tradition of casting animals in specific roles in order to progress in our understanding of human nature. One obvious example of this is the assigning of human characteristics to various animal players in Aesop’s fables. I suppose the effect of such stories is benign (or is it?), but they certainly do not aid in a more developed understanding of animals.
Wow! I really think Ali S. has touched on something important! Perhaps fear, because it is more of a primal reaction, is an authentic reaction to the animal. I’m interested in talking about our responses as humans to our fear of animals…
JB
Yes, I want to bring up this question of phobias in class – so remind me if I forget. There are animals we don’t have a phobic reaction to, for example, like kittens & puppies – so is our reaction to these creatures also non-mediated? Are we culturally conditioned to find them cute, or is that a “natural” reaction?
The author is convinced that Damien Hirst’s shark asserts a more “traditional encounter with the animal in art based on the notions of the sublime.” It achieves that by invoking man’s intuitive response when in direct confrontation with an animal of a notorious predatory nature. The author also goes on to talk about the ‘shock factor’ associated with Hirst’s shark piece. Hirst made an active decision to use a shark that was big enough to consume a living human being. Thus referencing a pre-historic fear of nature having its way with humans, when humans were not at the top of the food chain. The sublime in this arrangement is only invoked when the human is removed from the danger; “safe from destruction.” There is certain “pleasure that can be found in panic.”
The work is experienced through clear glass, which acts similarly to a painting surface – it flattens out the body of the shark, and makes it less real. The body of the shark is physically undergoing constant entropy, it decays in front of our very eyes, yet it lives in our fear of death – which in return has been informed by a famous hollywood film of the 1970s called Jaws, where this animal is portrayed to be nothing but a monster on a killing spree.
I’m wondering if this sublime quality has anything to do with the memento mori paintings produced during the Renaissance and Baroque period to remind man of his mortality and impending death so that he could better fashion deeds.
Speaking of phobias, sharks have populated my nightmares as long as i can remember as something sinister and dangerous. And it is because of this angst that i made my way to see the shark piece “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” by Damien Hirst while it was being exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum Of art in NYC. I had previously seen images of the piece and was quite struck by how it seemed to have suspended this majestic creature. I ended up being quite disappointed upon my actual encounter with this shark that was now no more than a specimen for display (a thing which suspended in death no longer evoked fear in me).This effect was heightened by the proximity of other objects and artifacts in the same space.
So to a certain extent it still represented a contemporary “Vanitas” piece especially in its noticeable state of decay, but did not manage to convey the power nor awaken my subconscious fear of it.