Dill I have seen a few of his "art"  pieces in usa & s. America and it is fantastic and illusional at the same time. This forum has raised many thoughts and comments on what is "art". i think it can be something that makes you think! be uplifted! challanged! and amused.
Taxidermy is a budgeoning art form in USA, I think its creepy, but some of the exhibits are breath taking, its also skilled work.
Um I think the hores work like Damien Hursts pieces are sick, dosen't mean to say it isnt art, it does not fill my criteria of art. Its distressing, is it art? I dont think so, I would be distressed if I walked into a gallery with that showing.
I think we need pieces that challange preconcieved ideas of "art" but I would not defend sensationalising stunts to show what a clever, risk taking artist that I am.
Not for me, but I am enjoying other members comments is a good discussion subject. The dog pictures had me weeping!!

What is and isnt art is down to you who view it.. but what may not be art to you... may be to someone else.

TBH.. a stuffed horse hanging from a ceiling does little for me, i find more art in the structure, form and movment of a living horse than I ever would in a dead one.

This is what the blog site 'Taxidermy: Ravishing Beasts' says though regarding the origins of Cattelans deceased equine;

"After Tiramisu - the racehorse - died of natural causes, Cattelan had her stuffed, but only partially: the pelt was stretched over a frame to keep the mare from weighing too much since Cattelan had the plan of hanging the horse from the ceiling. The legs were deliberately elongated, to add to the pathos."

So she died of natural causes, good good (and if you research taxidermy you will see that in most cases it is frowned upon to kill purely for the purposes of taxidermy). He didnt stuff her himself.. well its a specialised art, its not easy to do, fair enough.

If you dont like it though... just dont look. Its hardly 'sick' and if you think that then I guess you think the whole of the natural history museum is also sick.. thats dead, stuffed animals on display for us to gawk at.

It is not (and other works of Cattelans that involve taxidermy are also not) actually original, nor 'modern' to use taxidermied animals in strange settings.

We have been doing that for hundreds of years, as decorative items for the house, bizarre curios to amaze and amuse your guests - hey, you dont GET classier than  a Kitten Wedding or a Rat School-room scene in your Parlour!!!! - hares with horns on, fake animals (so common that when people first described the duck billed platypus, no one believed they were real!)..

None of this is new.

OMG!!!!!!!
That is outstanding :) :) Thanks for sharing the links :) :)

In reply I do appreciate your view but yes I do think natural history pieces are "sick" as i was trying to say art is different to different people. I have my view and it is that stuffing animals as an exhibition to people is sick, to thoses ends I was a zoo keeper for years, i own a SSSI site which I extinguished shooting rights over and I intend my animals on my land to be protected. ( and yes if I find a sick  animal I do have it culled.)
To stuff an animal for gratification is not my idea of "art" I hate the new designer minature dogs that over rated pampered people stick in their handbags.
Do not generlise your views with others sensibilities, some of us just think that animals have rights to. We were stuffing aborogine heads for ornamants, what we (humans) did to the red indian population was shameful and don't get me started on the concentration camps in S. Africa that us English introduced. Just accept that my idea of "sick" obviously isn't yours. Or do you approve of stuffed heads that are still in museams, don't you think that now we should know better or remain in the dark ages where the colour of a persons skin made them human or animal?

> I hate the new designer minature dogs that over rated pampered people stick in their handbags

So do I but that is a totally seperate issue, they are still alive :-)
Even if I did believe animals had "rights", which I don't, I would not think they have any once they are dead.   Again, human stuffed heads, or any remains really, are different because, unlike animals, we are aware of our connection to each other and need to be aware of the sensibilities of those connected by kinship or as a group to those remains.

So you dont think animals have rights? I do, fundementally we have a difference of opinion. So lets leave it at that.

> So you dont think animals have rights?

No, I take the animal welfare position not rights and even that does not extend once they are dead.  In my personal position that would be hugely hypocritical as I am not a vegetarian so how can I object if someone chooses to stuff them.

"After Tiramisu - the racehorse - died of natural causes, Cattelan had her stuffed, but only partially: the pelt was stretched over a frame to keep the mare from weighing too much since Cattelan had the plan of hanging the horse from the ceiling. The legs were deliberately elongated, to add to the pathos.

So, in reality, he did very little to form this piece of 'art' except to instruct others to prepare it, elongate its legs (therby removing its true conformation) and hang it up. mmmm. So really he is taking credit and money for something that is really others work, and in reality a museam piece rather than a gallery piece. Clever man.

maybe the air force museams should charge for viewings their 'works of art' with the old planes hanging from the rafters, bring in more than the usual admittance fees :) :)

Would people class it art if we strung a loved one from the ceiling?

I think not!

Disgusting.

Loved the art work on the pavement!

Maybe the airforce should call it modern art and charge money.

Maybe ill go all Tracey Emin and charge people to come and view my living room floor.. its not messy, its modern art...

But the airforce dont.. I dont.. so its not art.

Dont like it... dont go see it, but understand if you make comment on it, whether positive or negative then the 'artist' has touched your psyche, affected your day, and made you have a reaction, and that after all is really the point.

Whistler, i DO believe animals have rights, absolutely (And if you read another current thread from this week you'll see in an accident involving animals and humans i treat them both the same rather than automatically putting one above the other. That not 'animals have rights' enough?).

DEAD carcasses though.. no, they are meat, bones, skin, hair, muscle... carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, calcium....

As far as dead carcasses go.. i object to wastage of any valuable resource, use it, do something with it.. its not the animal it was when it was alive though!

Tracey123... Gunther von Hagens plasticized human cadavers, in various stages of dissection are considered by many to be 'art' as well as being educational. I could think of several pieces I would LOVE to create out of a deceased human volunteer (and make no mistake, those people who are now von Hagens 'art' were willing!), that would be designed to make you question humanity, our place on this earth, our percieved 'rights'.

If the real thing isnt acceptable then is it acceptable to use fictional images - the painting I did years ago that depicts a human carcass strung up in a row of pig carcasses in a butchers window.. is that also sick and disgusting (oh if i had the money and the time id do that for real you betcha!).  Is it sick and disgusting even if my point is (as it was) that we are ALL animals and if you take off our clothes and hang us on a hook we are not so very different from those we consume on a daily basis.. (naive in teh extreme but then i was 13 at the time).

Taxidermy has been around hundreds of years. If it were not for taxidermy our earliest 'naturalists' (theyd not quite got the hang of just seeing stuff back then, they also shot it...) would not have been able to show the every day person what a Quagga looked like, or a Dodo, or a duck billed platypus or an ostrich.
Its hard to really grasp what it must have been like only a few hundred years ago, not aware that all these creatures existed - but for a few bad sketches and what would very likely have seemed tall stories without the physical evidence provided by the skins and partial skeletons brought back.
You may slate those men for killing the animals they discovered but that was all they really had, and without those people and their desire not just to see these animals for themselves, but to bring them home and share them with the rest of us, we likely would NOT have people such as David Attenborough today!

Art can make you question things and learn things... if you open your eyes and let it.

Or you can block it out and say its all disgusting if you want to... after all thats very much your loss.

theemx

You certainly raise some very good points, and i totally agree with you about the animals that were bought back for all to see, without them we would have no idea how they looked, and as you say, any sketches would have maybe not been believed, especially if the artist was not skilled enough to capture them. I think they certainly deserve to be shown in museaums, along with all the other things that, although gruesome today, shows us our history past. I fail to see them as art, to me they are living (although not, hope you understand my meaning) history, same as the fossels and skeletons that are found.

my only reaction to this 'artist' who desplays a dead horse is that he is a money maker, someone who has found a way of exploiting art to make a buck, as I said, clever man. Does it touch my soul...nah, just wish I'd thought of it first :) same as for any other money making scheme, I always seem to catch the bus last :) I would put your picture that you did at 13 way above his attempts, because that does make someone viewing think, to open the mind, once the shock has gone.

Starving a dog for art or any reason is a no no to me. Pure and simple, and I'd like to starve the artist, let him know how it feels. Did that give a response from me, did it touch me, certainly but in the same way as it would had anyone been cruel to an animal.

As to the human body parts, poo pictures etc,  well I certainly find that sick and sensationalism. Another way to make a fast buck, using 'art' as the medium. not my thing, I wouldn't view it, would make me feel sick. Yes, it gives a response, affects me, but then so would seeing a collection of human body parts anyway, I would prefere not to look thankyou :) :)  I have cleaned out enough horses and cleared up after enough dogs not to want to view any more poo either thankyou very much :)

Or you can block it out and say its all disgusting if you want to... after all thats very much your loss

It's not my loss, it's smelling a scam when I hear one ;)....

My idea of art is traditional, constable, hobbs, snaffles, those sort of pictures, thelwell, sketches by unknown artists of horses, dogs, scenes, Beswick type of models, cold cast bronze, the clay thingies my sons made in primary school, glass, the pavements as shown on here, the pictures youth paints on walls around the country which very often says so much....salvador dali is about as far as I go away from traditional :) But I don't feel I have lost anything, as i doubt very much I would begin to understand the more obscure pictures anyway!  I like art that I can look into, slip away from the everyday...
Was Mona Lisa smiling.....or was it just the way you looked at her...:)

This is very true "DEAD carcasses though.. no, they are meat, bones, skin, hair, muscle... carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, calcium.... "
but
"If the real thing isnt acceptable then is it acceptable to use fictional images - the painting I did years ago that depicts a human carcass strung up in a row of pig carcasses in a butchers window.. is that also sick and disgusting (oh if i had the money and the time id do that for real you betcha!)[/b].   Is it sick and disgusting even if my point is (as it was) that we are ALL animals and if you take off our clothes and hang us on a hook we are not so very different from those we consume on a daily basis.. (naive in teh extreme but then i was 13 at the time)."
:-(  :-(

Would you care to expand on that Polo.. im not sure I understand which bits of my post you think are ' :( '

Sorry, I dont mean to offend you; your entitled to your views and all, but I 'm a christian and I do find that part of your post offensive.

those are brilliant!

theemx, you have given a very good post there but then this statement

> But the airforce dont.. I dont.. so its not art.

seems at total odds with everything else you go on to say. 
I really think people need to consider that just because they cannot see the art in something it need not mean there is none.  In fact do they actually mean they don't like the art in it?  The philosopher specialising is aesthetics David Novitz made some points relevent to this when he pointed out that the tabloid press, in criticising Hirsts and Emins work, were, in fact, criticising its value not advancing a definition or theory of art. 
If every piece of art could only qualify as such if every single person can see it as art we end up with a very narrow definition indeed.  As it is this thread has enough narrowing down.  We have had an objections to materials used (and I think the taxidermy issue is a red herring).  I wonder if someone could draw up a list of materials that are acceptable as art? We have had objections to any commercial potential which would rule out most of the street art that has been admired here.  Lovely though it is to look at, in my experience, it invariably has a collection tin sat besides and certainly my friends daughter and her chums that do this go home and create very different art for their real vocation.  Does that prevent it from being art?  We have had objection to the fact that the taxidermy has been done by someone else which appears to rule out design from being art.  The said friends daughter is studying architecture. I think she has no plans to actually lay the bricks so will her work not be art? :-) Although perhaps we can rule it out on the basis that this is how she intends to earn her living while, no doubt, continuing to create pieces of art and sculpture that will probably never sell.
I think it boils down to the fact that many people find the image of the animal upsetting but I do not think this is enough to justify claiming it is not art.  As the generally held view in Aesthetics is that art is something created by man to elicit an emotional response whether it is attraction or repulsion this piece appears to me to fit the bill.  Now, whether it is good art, ie a value judgement as to how well it has been executed, of course you are all entitled to your opinions, and very interesting they are :-) but nothing I have read so far suggests to me this is not art, infact by the strength of the emotions raised it has convinced me even more so.
Phew, that's enough deap thought for a Saturday morning :-)

>but I 'm a christian and I do find that part of your post offensive.

I'm a Christian too, and we're taught that it's the spirit that matters, not the physical body. That's mere worm-food.

> I'm a Christian too, and we're taught that it's the spirit that matters, not the physical body. That's mere worm-food

Very true, and just as true to animals.  All those that are repulsed because this is an animals body should remember that.  There has been no suggestion of any suffering.

JG I agree, its the implication I meant really. Oh bother, where's the embarassed smiley?

My vague thoughts are that it's Art if original thought and can't reproduced exactly by anyone else; the notorious bricks and tyres are an example of not-Art, because they could be taken apart and recreated by anyone and would look exactly the same. At best they come under the category of Craft.

Damian Hirsts pickles are interesting but not Art.

Don't worry Polo, I think artists that create such works are looking for a "gut" reaction :-)

> because they could be taken apart and recreated by anyone and would look exactly the same.

That would rule out a lot of design disciplines such as architecture.  Couldn't they get through on your definition of original thought?  And couldn't poor old Damian get through on that too?

>That would rule out a lot of design disciplines such as architecture.

No, the architectural design is the Artistic bit. Sticking the bricks together to make the building isn't - that's Craft.

If Damian's pickles are Art, then every Path lab in the country is an Art Gallery!

Don't be embarased polo. this post is getting so deep the Loch ness monster couldnt find it LOL.........

Ok, if someones idea of art is a horse hanging from a rafter, that they have had no part in actually preparing and people want to call it art fine for them, let them take the money and laugh at those silly enough to make their fortune for them. I personally don't think re arranged human body parts in this day and age are tasteful or art, but if the excentrics want to call it such so be it. ***laughs*** each to his own. I have a tad more respect for humans than that, but if the human when dead wants to have his body chopped up and exhibited...fair enough, I dont want to see it and I don't think its art, just a rather sad gimmic to make the 'artist' (and I use the term loosley) to become wellknown. Does it touch me...nah, just a money maker no more no less ***smiles and shakes head, 'whatever next***:) :)

> No, the architectural design is the Artistic bit. Sticking the bricks together to make the building isn't - that's Craft.
>

That's my point, the artistic element, the design, goes with it no matter who does the craft work.  Every time a Coco Chanel dress is stitched together it still carries her art.  The art does not disappear.

> then every Path lab in the country is an Art Gallery!

I depends whether they arrange their specimens in a way to evoke an emotional response. I suppose they could have a go :-D

You could be right there Isabel (your quote from my post)..

I see a horse in a field and to me,that is art, its structure and movement its very essence of horse - something thats captured my interest pretty much all the time i have been on this earth.

But is that 'Art'. As in something you go to look at that someone has put there for you to see to say 'something'..

No.. it just 'is'.

I dont know im probably talking myself in circles right now.. too many hours, not enough sleep and a duffed up clutch in the middle of the willlllllds of yorkshire does that to a person.

Polo - I am sorry if what I said offends you that was not my intention at all - whilst Im not religious I do try to respect other peoples faiths.

What a very interesting topic!
I must admit to feeling shocked and even outraged when I first saw the photograph, but as I read down the thread and began to rationalise my feelings, I became much more accepting and I realised how my initial feelings were a kneejerk reaction to seeing something you wouldn't normally see/think about. I would never have thought I could enjoy this sort of art, but I have enjoyed the discussion it provoked.

I thought the horse was aluve when I first see it! lol I was well against it then, but if its dead and stuffed, It oeuld be well weird and I wouldnt go in the room probably but at least the horse isnt alive and being hung up.

I think art can sometimes push to many boundaries and people start getting stupid or dangerous to people or indeed animals, just look at the poor dog that was starved to death as art? what the hell was anyone thinking that went to see it?

The thing is, that 'poor dog that was starved to death as art'...... wasnt!

According to the gallery, the dog was tied up for a matter of hours, fed when it wasnt on view to the public, and then it escaped.

The internet rumour mill now has it that the dog was displayed for days, not fed, and died right there in the gallery in front of people...

Which is actually true... I dont know personally, but THAT artists point was (in part at least) that we only become interested in something when someone else tells us we should, we then take the side we are told to take and think what we are told to think (by style of writing and language used), and that we care more about a dog than we do about a human.

The outrage, reaction and chinese whispers that have occurred since this 'art' was displayed have proven his case really!