IssueAntennae 26 - Autumn 2013 ISSN 1756-9575 Painting Animals II Chris Musina – Towards a New Animism / Christohpher Reiger – A Modern-Mystic Look at Animals/ Jessica Holmes – Animals as Wallpaper / Sunaura Taylor – Witnessing Animals / Rene’ J. Marquez – Decolonizing Dog Painting / Isobel Wood – Animals in Low-Res / Olly and Suzi - Picturing the Beast / Vanessa Barbay – Becoming Animal: Matter as Indexical Sign in Representation / Cecilia Novero – Posthuman Animals and the Avant-Garde: The Case of Daniel Spoerri / Roland Borgards – Fish: Singly, and in Shoals / Petra Shilder – The Art of Farming / Eileen Yanoviak – More Than Marginal: Insects in the Hours of Mary of Burgundy 1 Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture Editor in Chief Giovanni Aloi Academic Board Steve Baker Ron Broglio Matthew Brower Eric Brown Carol Gigliotti Donna Haraway Linda Kalof Susan McHugh Rachel Poliquin Annie Potts Ken Rinaldo Jessica Ullrich Advisory Board Bergit Arends Rod Bennison Helen Bullard Claude d’Anthenaise Petra Lange-Berndt Lisa Brown Chris Hunter Karen Knorr Rosemarie McGoldrick Susan Nance Andrea Roe David Rothenberg Nigel Rothfels Angela Singer Mark Wilson & Bryndís Snaebjornsdottir Global Contributors Sonja Britz Tim Chamberlain Lucy Davis Amy Fletcher Katja Kynast Christine Marran Carolina Parra Zoe Peled Julien Salaud Paul Thomas Sabrina Tonutti Johanna Willenfelt Copy Editor Maia Wentrup Front Cover Image: Olly and Suzi, Red Tiger, Karnali, Nepal, 1997 © Olly and Suzi 2 EDITORIAL ANTENNAE ISSUE 26 This and the previous issue of Antennae have been entirely dedicated to the practice of painting. The aim of this exploration is not that of attempting to draw conclusions on the matter of animal representation through the medium of painting itself, but to focus on the specificities of the medium in order to understand how these can aid, address, envision or suggest new human-animal relations. In the case of painting, both issues do not present a conceptualised selection of contributions but instead aim at maintaining a very open mind about the intricacies that painting animals may unveil. Resisting a thematic curatorial approach, both issues, however provide a departure from classical representational tropes in which the non-human has for centuries been symbolically objectified. How objectification is prevented, exploited, or subverted in panting is something the selected works and texts featured in these instalments aim at mapping. As per usual, this is a very rich issue gathering a number of contributions from established and emerging academics, researchers, curators and artists. Special thanks go to all those who have contributed to the making of this ambitious project. Giovanni Aloi Editor in Chief of Antennae Project Lecturer in Visual Culture: Queen Mary University of London Sotheby's Institute of Art Tate Galleries 3 CONTENTS ANTENNAE ISSUE 26 5 Towards a New Animism Drawing from a deep phylogeny of cultural cues, Chris Musina references historical painters, contemporary animal cultures, kitsch and museum dioramas in an exploration of the represented relationships to the animal world. Musina addresses the animal not as symbolic object, but as subject, yet a subject aware of its own powerful symbolic nature; painting is interesting to the artist precisely because of this reason and its effects. These paintings are populated with “knowing animal protagonists” who stare back at the viewer with an uneasy gaze; aware of that uncomfortable places they occupy in our cultural histories--asking for compassion, mercy, or simply to be put out of their misery. Text by Chris Musina 11 A Modern-Mystic Look at Animals Growing up on the rural Delmarva Peninsula, I became acquainted with the local flora and fauna at a young age. Working at field chores, hunting, fishing, and especially when playing, my outdoors experiences were akin to the Wonderland exploits of Lewis Carroll's Alice. Carroll's premise, that "things get curiouser and curiouser," guided me through many a childhood adventure. I anthropomorphized animals and cast them as key players in an epic production of which I, too, was a part. For me, as for Alice, the natural world was enchanted and ethical in an unsentimental way. Text by Christopher Reiger 15 Animals as Wallpaper London-based artist Jessica Holmes makes mixed media paintings, where elements of collage create fields, planes and confusions of perspective that are mirrored in an inverted view of the relationship between humanity and animals. Text by Jessica Holmes 18 Witnessing Animals I am moved to paint because I am moved to see. “Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing that one sees” is a quote from the philosopher Paul Valery. This quote resonates deeply with me. To me this process of seeing is at once political and profoundly personal. It is political in its slowness, in its individuality, and its absurd inefficiency. It is personal as trying to see without “names” is deeply subjective. In painting, the time spent seeing and paying attention is important to me, especially when it is a paying attention to things that are hard to look at, things that we as a culture would rather not see. Text by Sunaura Taylor 30 Decolonizing Dog Painting I would argue that painting (object and practice) and animal representations both suffer from associations—or even as perceived expressions of—sentimentality. Why is sentimentality such a bad thing, I wonder? The modernist heritage of western societies seems certainly to have vilified all that is non-rational, un-Enlightenment, and, especially, sentimental. Text by René J. Marquez 37 Animals in Low-Res My mother talks to her cats like they’re guests at a dinner party. The first mistake was letting them sit at the kitchen table, the second was buying a potty stool to ‘help them reach the cat flap better’. She is in absolutely no doubt that each cat has its own opinions and political leanings, its own food brand preference and that they are a few consonants short of sounding out the days of the week. Text by Isobel Wood 44 Picturing the Beast – A Portfolio by Olly and Suzi We paint together. Ours is a total collaboration. We paint hand over hand on the same painting at the same time. All our work is created in this way. Our art-making process is concerned with our journey; a collaborative, mutual response to nature at its most primitive and wild. Text and Images by Olly and Suzi 52 Becoming Animal: Matter as Indexical Sign in Representation My practice-led PhD research project in the Painting Workshop at the Australian National University challenges what it means to be a painter of animals. The treatment of animals by my Hungarian born father, Tibor, an amateur naturalist and taxidermist, is fundamental to the motivations driving my painting practice and its development. Equally, formative and ongoing exposure to Australian Aboriginal visual traditions, popularised in a style known as x-ray, inform my exploration of animal representation. Text by Vanessa Barbay 59 Posthuman Animals and the Avant-Garde: The Case of Daniel Spoerri Cecilia Novero’s essay situates Daniel Spoerri’s 1995 series of assemblages Carnival of Animals within the legacy of the historical Avant-Garde. In taking a close look at Carnival’s ingenious recourse to non-organicity, through Spoerri’s reworking of chance, and the readymade, but also “frottage,” the essay argues that the Avant-Garde helps to envision human and non-human encounters outside anthropocentric and representational frameworks. At the same time that Spoerri’s assemblages leave behind the frameworks of representation, they do not configure a new space of action or being for non-humans. Rather, they point to multiple lines of escape, including the carnivalesque. In short, the essay maintains that Spoerri’s work offers a valuable example of how the Avant-Garde indeed contributes to the discussion about con-figurations of human and non-human animals. Text by Cecilia Novero 78 Fish: Singly, and in Shoals Every animal that is shown can always signify something, or, to be more precise, it can mean more and something other than merely the animal as shown. This is in the nature of human artifacts, attaching meaning to which is common practice in our culture. This is especially apparent in literature: one cannot read of animals without construing their literary occurrence. Roland Borgards discusses the paintings of fish by Vroni Schwegler. Text by Roland Borgards 82 The Art of Farming I live on a small family farm in North Holland where I exercise my two greatest passions in life: art and nature. My artwork emerges from my experiences on the farm creating a dialog between my two occupations one as a farmer and the other as a working artist. Text by Petra Shilder 85 More than Marginal: Insects in the Hours of Mary of Burgundy A book of hours was an intensely personal devotion book in the Middle Ages. Used daily to direct the prayers of the owner, these illuminated manuscripts, or hand-made illustrated books, were lavishly decorated to the taste of the patron. In the late fifteenth-century Hours of Mary of Burgundy, also known as the Vienna Hours, every folio is richly decorated with window scenes of religious subjects surrounded by extravagant foliage. This decoration of the margins includes, among other animals, an array of insects including bees, moths, flies, and grasshoppers. Text by Eileen Yanoviak 4 TOWARDS A NEW ANIMISM Drawing from a deep phylogeny of cultural cues, Chris Musina references historical painters, contemporary animal cultures, kitsch and museum dioramas in an exploration of the represented relationships to the animal world. Musina addresses the animal not as symbolic object, but as subject, yet a subject aware of its own powerful symbolic nature; painting is interesting to the artist precisely because of this reason and its effects. These paintings are populated with “knowing animal protagonists” who stare back at the viewer with an uneasy gaze; aware of that uncomfortable places they occupy in our cultural histories--asking for compassion, mercy, or simply to be put out of their misery.