crocodilian – You need to be a Guest Author here. (p.s. I also think taxidermy is interesting , but mostly in a bad way.)

Here’s why: with a majority of art, the task is to create something from raw, static materials with little to no aesthetic depth of their own (a tube of paint, a pencil). In an everyday context, the raw materials are boring, but are used to create something that (hopefully) is not boring.

If you have a painting of a fox, and a taxidermy fox… both are imitations of life, but from different directions. The painting creates an imitation of life were there was no life before, but the taxidermy fox takes something that once possessed life (and here I am assuming a living thing is arguably a source of aesthetic interest in-and-of itself, right? with some exceptions… Erin Wasson) and attempts to re-infuse that thing with new life… as a lifelike corpse. It will always fail as an aesthetic work, because it can never achieve the aesthetic value that the body possessed when it was truly alive.

Go ahead and scorn these self-proclaimed artists while you’re taking on the “creatives” at the Selby – I’ll be scorning right there with you.

And also – a rabbit? In a HAT?! Please… like no one has ever thought of THAT before. This person needs a new schtick.

Skye – Ha, Aspirational is my word of the day!

Jill – And yet you cut right to the heart of the matter.

Dexter – I remember that store!

Imelda – Remember that guy who sold cans of his feces?? A great, great artist.

Mark – Would she fit in a matchbox?

kim – There is never a shortage of buyers for that kind of shit.

fashion herald – I look forward to your rant.

Deni – YAY for us.

Hammie – Children have NO sense of what’s commercial!

reddoorread – That’s more credit than I would give it. I think it’s hucksterism at its most crass and cynical.

now, call me a luddite or whatevs, but i think in order for something to be art it must have some sort of artistic integrity. i think this kind of stuff, if i was going to classify it is political craft.

that teddy looks like he wakes up in the night and walks around with a meat cleaver.

And Mr Hammie and his brother and sisters had a hamster that died when they were kids. They buried it and then dug it up later to see if it was a skeleton yet. They did not put it in a glass case, more’s the pity.

xx

“Call me a philistine, but art made from dead animals is just bullshit, with all due or undue respect to Damien Hirst. Make it go away!”

I agree 100 percent. Right-on SW!

http://www.colette.fr/#/eshop/article/67030/the-selby-shop/371/