The Art of Taxidermy

An A.R.T. school exists in Havre, Montana: A.R.T. standing for the Academy of Realistic Taxidermy. At this school, students can take ‘classes including birds, gameheads, life-size mammals, fish, and business. From World and National Taxidermy champions from across the United States, students will learn the art of taxidermy’ (“Academy,” 2003, para. #1-2).

Taxidermy,“…describe[es] the many methods of reproducing a life-like three-dimensional representation of an animal for permanent display” (“What Is Taxidermy,” 1996, para. #1). ‘Translated loosely from the ancient Greek words taxis, meaning movement, and derma, meaning skin, “taxidermy,” literally means the movement of skin’ (“What Is Taxidermy,” 1996, para. #2).

Taxidermists arrange and rearrange the skin of dead animals around synthetic molds to artfully recreate the beauty of life. Beauty itself “possesses redemptive powers all its own, as in nature. But when beauty is created by human hand[s], it can be even more redemptive, more powerful, because it is created with intent” (York, 1995, para. #5). “Beauty can be both physical and mental; it can be both an identification and an evaluation. This is why beauty and truth dovetail so perfectly, why the greatest art is both beautiful and true: art and ideas” (York, 1995, para. #7). Taxidermy is art and ideas providing the American culture with a look at the beauty of life through the truth of death.

“[Those…] who understand the philosophical premises expressed through art, […] are charged with the […] profound responsibility of giving expression to a deeper mood, one of renewed celebration: a mood that seeks not to escape reality but to embrace it…” (York, 1995, para. #14). Taxidermists fulfill this responsibility by embracing the reality of death as a part of life. They embrace it so closely they “seem to make little distinction between loving animals that are alive and loving ones that are not” (Orlean, 2003, para. #6). The fear of the living for death is what once made taxidermy a creepy hobby. It is that same emotional stirring of fear invoked by the art of taxidermy that is now awakening an American culture prone to ignoring the reality of death. Much to the dismay of most Americans, the reality remains that death is inevitable. With this eerie light at the end of the tunnel, some people ‘are entering an age of brutal honesty [,…] “coming around to the fact that they like […] objects that provoke emotions, even if that means fear or disgust”’ (Guzman, 2001, para. #17).

‘The success of a taxidermy mount depends on how alive it looks’ (Orlean, 2003, para. #5), but ‘imbuing a dead object with life and giving it characteristics, makes people uncomfortable’ (Topcik, 2005, para. #5). In this way, the art of taxidermy provides fear and disgust in one life-like package with the “unique capacity to evoke the mystery of death” (Topcik, 2005, para. # 5), and at the same time, serve as a mirror of reflection that “can inspire people to recognize the natural world around them and to reconsider their position in it” (Topcik, 2005, para. #4).

Taxidermy mounts vary from the realistic dioramas of “otters swimming in a perpetual circle around a leopard frog” (Orlean, 2003, para. #8) or ‘two tree sparrows building a nest’ (Orlean, 2003, para. #19), to the progressively abstract configurations of “…a deer with a mailbox impaled on an antler […], or a coyote whose torso was split open to reveal a miniature scene of the destruction of the World Trade Center, complete with little firemen and rubble piles…” (Orlean, 2003, para. #19). With these types of mounts, taxidermy forces people to consider their reaction to the likenesses of life they are faced with, ‘whether that reaction is revulsion or love or distrust’ (Topcik, 2005, para. #4). Taxidermy works as an emotional pinprick attempting to rouse the public from the stupor of workaday life. So deeply does taxidermy want society to understand the beautifully faceted nature of life, it strives to re-create it with each precious stitch.

It is still from a distance that Americans marvel at the fact that life has another side, and it will be a long time before the social aspect of the culture is ready to embrace the whole. Until then, there is the novel art of taxidermy, braved by very few, capturing the vibrancy that is life in the stillness of death, prodding the American culture to ask, where do we go from here?