October 22, 2009
A taxidermic sleight-of-hand, or perhaps a true genetic anomaly? The answer – like the stuffed corpse of the animal itself – remains tantalizingly out of reach. But apparently this two-headed calf used to wear the clever bowler hat on the seam that turned its two heads into one. A surrealist pun, and an optical dissolution. Clearly, the longhorn steer hanging right next door became enchanted by the bowler and decided to lasso it for a special occasion. Imagine what it must have felt like to realize that its horns were no longer attached to a head. A phantom skull, and in quite inadequate consolation, the steer can only offer a tip of the hat on the tip of a horn.
I suspect that the hunter and taxidermist strategized at great length over how best to convey the fearsome impact of an impending bear attack – how clever the hunter, how brave, how indomitable to kill this vicious creature. Inadvertently, however, they created an existential, primal scream of grief and injustice as the hands are raised in horror at the approaching bullet that will take its life. And thus, the hunter has made one of human society’s most heartwrenching testaments of the atrocities inflicted by man upon animal. Ingenious curatorial decisionmaking positioned the corpse next to the artifacts that killed it and have driven its species to the brink of extinction: a vast array of weaponry for use against animals..and Sioux.
I learned to shoot all sorts of guns – rifles, pistols, machine guns – as a late teenager. In South Texas, my much older Army pals were thrilled to bring along their little scrappy punkrock sidekick, and provided me with an exceptional education. In addition to mechanical and ballistic concerns, they delivered many quite memorable lessons about weapons ethics. I was recruited into the “Gun Wives Shooting Club” even though I wasn’t a wife. “That’s okay, Gun Sisters are fine.” But I wasn’t a sister either. “You’re a woman, right?” The rules seemed very fluid. Once, there was an old cowboy there with a silver six shooter. He came up and asked if I would shoot a couple rounds into a target on the straw bale range. It was an amazing revolver and I had just emptied it when he said, “I like to know that all the ladies at the range have handled my gun.” I think it was then that the joy went out of target practice. It was like I could fool myself into thinking that guns weren’t about what they were about but in the end that’s what they were about. Like my grandmother, I prefer my gunpowder in firecrackers.
My circumference of ignorance includes the particular variety or species of this animal, as well as any reason why it might need such spectacles. Taxidermy has amplified a determination that suggests strongly held feelings on the subject of being decapitated and hung on a wall. Curator also decided the creature should carry a bagpipe, and a bridle.
“Hey, check out this rack,” jokes the curator, doubtless pleased as could be with the inadvertently brilliant commentary on the tragic similarieis between plastic surgery and taxidermy. The woman is naked except that she’s wearing the skin of a leopard, handily fashioned into a bikini. The fur coat on stage right is just out of reach – the rest of the leopard? the Blonde’s winter wardrobe? Those wooden pincer things are a little eerie and ominous, particularly in their visual placement. Then we have a painted and embroidered wool robe from the local Indian tribes – without a person inside it, of course. I guess you have to stop somewhere, right? Human skin just doesn’t stuff as well, or else I guess the United States would have museums of taxidermied Crow and Sioux alongside all the stuffed buffalo. I should say that dead human skin doesn’t stuff as well – we seem to work around it okay for breasts and lips and whatnot. Ah, the urge to preserve.
Detail of a medicine weasel, filled by its original Sioux creator with herbs and material objects designed to influence the shamanic dreams of its maker. I wonder what it thinks of life inside a plexiglass case, beneath 24-7 florescent lighting, where nobody sleeps and nobody dreams. It has been gathered as yet another item of regional taxidermy, which also might be surprising to find itself grouped in such company, since it was created to heal rather than to indicate superior markmanship – those animals stuffed and mounted in the same way a baseball pitcher might sign a world series winning baseball and put it up on the wall. Do we even have social codes about turning animals into objects? I hope that the medicine weasel brings healing to the neighboring stuffed murdered animals whose last moments were terror and pain.
Oh Grizzly, would that your lifeless claws still retained the capacity to rip out the heart of the human who killed you. I hesitate to offer any context or commentary on this Grizzly Bear, who was shot in the wild and later dressed in the parade costume of an Arabian horse. There is a cruel whimsy in this curatorial choice – as though partly utilitarian (“what else would we do with the horse outfit?”) and partly hilarious (“oh, look, how cute it is, like a teddy bear. so sweet. here. I’ll take your picture with the silly bear,” and then of course a nice shot of something that stinks a little bit like evil – given that we’ve nearly massacred this species right off the face of our planet.
Crow medicine bag, wrapped in old quirts. Sometimes what seems like a desecration is not. Perhaps this medicine bag has found its way to the atrocity museum as a means of protecting and guiding the souls of the animals whose bodies are so humiliated and betrayed. Perhaps inside it contains a repository of conscience – or perhaps its very existence serves as a beacon, reminding us that we should never entitle ourselves to separate a body from its spirit – that is not the job of mortal humans.