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introduction 1. For a deeper treatment of the representation of animals, see Rothfels, Representing Animals, and Baker, Picturing the Beast. 2. These difficulties are not confined to animals but constitute fundamental problems of semiotics. See Saussure, Writings in General Linguistics. On the semiotics of popular culture, see Barthes, Mythologies and Elements of Semiology. 3. Dion et al., Mark Dion, 127. 4. On the relationship between desire, perception, and culture, see Žižek, Looking Awry and Interrogating the Real. 5. On the various ways in which animals get drawn by and into history, see Kaloff, Looking at Animals; Lee, Meat, Modernity; and La Capra, History and Its Limits. 6. For some essential examples of the developing historical scholarship on animals and society, see Ritvo, Animal Estate; Kete, Beast in the Boudoir; Robbins, Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots; Fudge, Perceiving Animals; and HenningerVoss , Animals in Human Histories. On the wider issue of the animal in changing attitudes toward nature in the West, see Thomas, Man and the Natural World. 7. McShane and Tarr, Horse in the City, 1. 8. For more on companion species, see Haraway, Companion Species Manifesto and When Species Meet. 9. E-mail correspondence of 2 June 2010 with the artist, who also notes that some of the scenes drew from local newspaper accounts. 10. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 198. 11. “It goes without saying that seeing a lion and being frightened of it at the same time, is different from merely seeing it.” Descartes, “René Descartes’ Sixth Reply.” On the beetle in a box, see Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 293. 12. Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, 232; Deleuze, “Body, Meat, and Spirit.” In the visual arts, see Thompson, Becoming Animal; for theoretical approaches to animal studies, see Wolfe, Zoontologies. 13. On this theme, see one of the artist’s most recent collaborations, Dion et al., Marvelous Museum. 14. “Killer Whale Kills Trainer at SeaWorld as Horrified Spectators Watch,” 24 February 2010, http:// www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/ feb/24/killer-whale-kills-trainerseaworld -dawn-brancheau/ (accessed 19 May 2010). 15. “SeaWorld Orlando to Keep Killer Whale That Killed Trainer,” Los Angeles Times, 26 February 2010, http://articles.latimes.com/2010/ feb/26/nation/la-na-seaworlddeath26 -2010feb26 (accessed 5 May 2010); “Tilikum, Orca That Killed SeaWorld Orlando Trainer, Will Remain at the Park Despite Calls to Free Him,” Los Angeles Times, 25 February 2010, http://latimesblogs notes 180 not E S t o PA GE S 19–23 .latimes.com/unleashed/2010/02/ tilikum-orca-killer-whale-sea-worldorlando .html (accessed 19 May 2010). 16. “Whale Kills Trainer at Florida’s SeaWorld,” 24 February 2010, http:// www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/24/ usa-whale-idUSN2421601020100224 (accessed 19 May 2010). 17. See Kathryn Taubert, “Sea World Tragedy: A Former Marine Mammal Trainer Speaks,” http://blogs. naplesnews.com/lifeslowlane/2010/02/ sea-world-tragedy-a-former-marinemammal -trainer-speaks.html (accessed 19 May 2010). 18. For the comments summarized here, see the articles cited in notes 14–16. chAPtEr 1 1. Buffon’s Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du roi was published in quarto in thirty-six volumes between 1749 and 1789. Other printings and editions soon followed, ranging in size from folio to duodecimo, alongside translations into German, Dutch, English, Italian, and Spanish in Buffon’s lifetime (Loveland, Rhetoric and Natural History, 10). The Histoire naturelle was a highly collaborative project, although Buffon directed and edited it. The first and most famous of Buffon’s collaborators was Louis-JeanMarie Daubenton, who worked on the first fifteen volumes. Along with other textual collaborators, Buffon relied on observations and anecdotes offered by hundreds of correspondents, as well as the contributions of artists, most significantly the illustrator Jacques de Sève. When citing the French edition, I have used the standard forty-four-volume edition of printed text and images. The names of de Sève and other artists and engravers, including [Juste] Chevillet, Jean Charles Bacquoy, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, and A.-J. Defehrt, are given alongside Buffon’s in the credits for the illustrations in this chapter. On visual imagery in Buffon’s work, see Liebman, “Painting Natures.” 2. See Picasso and Buffon, 40 dessins en marge du Buffon. See also Picasso, Histoire naturelle. On Picasso and Maar, see Baldassari’s insightful Picasso: Life with Dora Maar. 3. Sirens, like harpies, are variously composed of women and birds— sometimes, as in Greek art, as birds with large women’s heads, bird feathers, and...

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