Gorgeous Beasts: Animal Bodies in Historical Perspective

A Conversation with the Artist Mark Dion

A Conversation with the Artist Mark Dion joan b. landes, paula young lee, paul youngquist: Gorgeous Beasts, the title of our volume, calls attention to the doubleness of human relations with animals: we are both captivated and repelled by animals. We adopt them as pets, hunt them for food or trophies, collect them in zoos and menageries, and preserve them as taxidermies within natural history collections and private homes. Whether through acts of love or extinction, we constantly impose order on animals in our desire to know them. You have observed elsewhere that the problem is not with taxonomy itself but with the ideologies that infiltrate taxonomy. Can the paradox of Gorgeous Beasts offer an entry point into a more critical, but also more playful approach to animal subjects, as you have attempted in your own work? mark dion: I know what you mean; our society exhibits such wildly contradictory attitudes toward animals. However, what strikes me is that we continue to regard them as central and important to the human experience. This seems important to me, since so much of our culture devalues anything outside of conventional capital exchange, and wild animals are certainly on the margins of capital. Insofar as actual contact with living flesh-and-blood animals is no longer a part of the everyday life of many, we have filled that gap with surrogates . Animals continue to be seminal in the stories we tell, and we surround ourselves with beasts in porcelain, bronze, plastic, and plaster. Images of birds, fish, and mammals adorn our wallpaper, flatware, and the pictures that line our walls. What American child’s bed is devoid of a teddy bear? 168 GORGE OUS BE A S T S This apparent need for animals in our culture does seem like an opportunity for a more complex and critical dialogue about the place of animals in the world. Certainly, wildlife conservation organizations have been aware of how to exploit the Gorgeous Beasts paradox. They have been able to make tigers, sharks, and bears into cute fuzzy icons able to coax dollars from suburban pockets. This concept of the charismatic megafauna has allowed organizations to protect a wide range of organisms and habitats but use a single animal as a poster child. Unfortunately, this does little to broaden public understanding of the complexities of international wildlife conservation. I also employ surrogates in my work to speak about real animals. When using goofy plush animals and even taxidermy antiques, I am employing them like a ventriloquist’s dummy to humorously speak grim truth. jl, pyl, py: Yes, by speaking grim truths that demand the viewer’s attention, as when you present an entomological subject, a mole awkwardly suspended by a rope from a ceiling hook (Les nécrophores–L’enterrement [Hommage à Jean-Henri Fabre], 1997), or, with particularly mordant humor, when you encapsulate the tragic history of the bison in a diorama, which is itself mounted on a moving cart (Mobile Wilderness Unit, 2001), suggesting that wilderness can now be trucked out when it is needed, even after the disappearance in the wild of an animal or plant species . But equally, in your works, there is always a marvelous element of play, which disturbs but also amuses (for example, Polar Bears and Toucans [from Amazonas to Svalbard], 1991). By inviting the laughter that accompanies a child’s surprise, you bring us closer to realizing our own animal nature and the animals’ place in our species’ survival. Your works do indeed raise questions about the limits of conservation as an institutionalized politics, but you don’t refrain from asking us to laugh at the absurdity of the way in which the gorgeous, what is beautiful, is tied ineluctably to a long history of political violence between humans (as a natural species) and animals. Can you share your thoughts about the role of laughter in your art? dion: In a society where hypocrisy, ignorance, cynicism, and self-interest are so much a part of the framework of real politics, I think laughter is one of the only weapons left to us. Is it surprising that most intelligent Americans trust The Daily Show and The Colbert Report more than the supposed legitimate news networks? At times, parody and a certain Brechtian humor are the only cards we are left to play in the game of resistance. It seems clear 169 C O N V E R S...