For more on Rob’s wonderful work, see his section in the Muse Gallery (click the menu link above), or visit his website at roberthite.com.

Visit the reception and view the images if you can.

Cheers, Bill

There was a time when the only place you could find J. Henry Fair’s Industrial Scars was in the Muse Gallery of Practical Ethics.

That began to change several years ago, however, with small showings around the Hudson Valley, then a landscape exhibit at MassMOCA, and now features in Museum, Smithsonian Magazine, and CNN.

Mr. Fair’s website now has its own gallery of Industrial Scars, and a book, The Day After Tomorrow: Images of Our Earth in Crisis, coming out 2011.

Henry is an old friend, and I’ve always loved his photography, environmental and otherwise. So congratulations Henry! Well deserved.

Cheers, Bill

One of WCMA’s more beautiful and though provoking installations is Mocha Dick, a sculpture by Tristin Lowe. Here is how the museum describes it.

Over fifty feet long and ten feet high, artist Tristin Lowe’s sculpture of a white sperm whale sprawls across the museum’s largest gallery. Mocha Dick is a life-sized rendition of the infamous leviathan that once harassed ships near Mocha Island in the South Pacific Ocean.

The exhibition is open 13 March – 08 August 2010. I’ll be sharing comments on ‘Life Boat Ethics’ during an interdisciplinary gallery panel, The Whiteness of the Whale, to be held on Thursday 08 April 2010. Please come join us for this event. Admission is free.

For more information on the WCMA, visit www.wcma.org.

Cheers!

When Angelo realized he was about to become homeless, he was determined not to let his cat Simon suffer the same fate. Angelo was heartbroken to imagine being separated from his best friend, but in an unexpected turn of events, and with the help of the Boston-based organization Phinney’s Friends, Angelo has worked out an unusual arrangement — one that enables him to focus on his own needs, while ensuring the very best care for his cat.

To find out more about Phinney’s Friends, or to make a donation, email Carmine Dicenso at: cdicenso@mspca.org

For additional episodes and more information, visit the Animal Inventory TV website.

Click on the links below to watch the first two episodes.

Episode 1: May & Nebraska

In 2006, May woke up one morning to find that her dog Nebraska couldn’t move his back legs. Two years later, Nebraska is still paralyzed from the waist down, and May has turned her life upside down to accommodate her best friend’s special needs.

Episode 2: Christine & Kelsey and Zoe

In 1992, Christine was struck by two above-ground trains while walking her dog Kelsey in Boston. At the last possible moment, Kelsey pulled Christine out of the direct path of the oncoming trains. Christine was badly injured, but Kelsey’s heroic action likely saved her life. During her lengthy recovery process, Christine decided to devote her life to the welfare of dogs, and co-founded the organization Grey2k. Now, with the help of her greyhound Zoe, Christine is campaigning to end greyhound racing in the state of Massachusetts

Check back in mid-December for episode 3, Angelo & Simon: When Angelo realized he was about to become homeless, he was determined not to let his cat Simon suffer the same fate. With the help of the Boston-based organization Phinney’s Friends, Angelo is able to focus on his own needs, while knowing that Simon is in good hands…

Episodes are available on Animal Inventory TV’s Youtube channel and the show’s website. For more information about the show and upcoming episodes, visit Animal Inventory TV.

You can view more of Henry’s work at Muse (the Practical Ethics gallery).

Weiqiang’s winning photo is of the newly constructed Qinghai-Tibet Railway, a structure that has been marred in controversy over its potential impact on the migration patterns of the Tibetan antelope. In the artist’s photo (above), a pack of antelope is shown ambling beneath the behemoth structure, apparently unaware or unafraid of the train passing above.

The photo came under intense scrutiny when numerous bloggers noticed inconsistencies in the image. The photographer, who originally claimed to camp out for 8 days waiting for the perfect shot, has now admitted that he photo-shopped two separate photos to create the award-winning image. At first he defended the image claiming that it was not intended as a news photo. It was originally used as the poster image for the Kekexili nature preservation area with the intent, he claimed, of helping the antelope. Since the uproar, however, Weiqiang admitted his wrongdoing and resigned from his post at the Daqing Evening News.

The artist’s reasoning for falsifying the image remains unclear. However, protests and concern over the train’s impact on the environment perhaps created a need for propaganda material to dispel public outcry. At the very least, it can be said that the doctored image was born out of a divisive situation between environmentalists and urban expansionists. There was a need to prove, in some capacity, that human encroachment on this territory does not impact the existing flora and fauna. Before the photo was revealed as a fake, it certainly made an impression on the public. As Weiqiang said on the evening he accepted his award, “I want to be able to capture the harmony among the Tibetan antelopes, the train, men and nature on July 1, 2006. I want to express through this photograph that the earth belongs to everybody. Everybody wants to see harmony among men and animals.” Now, however, it is hard to say how this incident will influence debates over the harmony between the Qinghai-Tibet Railway and the Tibetan antelope.

Meanwhile, Weiqiang’s photo has been stripped of its winning title, and the impact of the structure on the antelope population remains unclear.

Sources and further reading:

Chinese Editor Resigns over Fake Tibet Photo (Yahoo)

Photoshop Helps Photographer Win Award (China Economic Review)

Interview Transcripts with Weiqiang (Shanghaiist)

Untamed, the new coffee table book by Steve Bloom, is a photographic menagerie of five continents-worth of animals. Bloom spent ten years traveling throughout the world to amass a collection of photos that are as beautiful as they are insightful.

Often animal imagery suffers from being unilateral in its meaning — that is, the animal is conceptually flattened to depict a less-than-dynamic being. But the wonderful thing about Bloom’s work is how he seamlessly traverses a range of ideas in his vast portfolio. Each photo tells a story about an animal and it also reveals the complicated and diverse ways that Bloom sees animals.

In some pictures, the animals fill the frame with such abundance that they seem to become the landscape itself. They are not complacent residents of a habitat; instead, they ARE the habitat:

In other photos, Bloom reveals the interlocking relationship between animals and landscape, and the elemental essence of a single species. In these photos the animals are integrated but unique from their habitat. They are OF the landscape:

In still other photos, Bloom manages to create portraiture that captures the unique individuality of his subjects. He shoots with a sensitivity and tenderness that is common in pet portraiture, but extraordinarily rare in wildlife photography:

Bloom is at his best when he marries these three perspectives. In those unique moments he is able to communicate the vastness of landscape, the elemental essence of species and the uniqueness of individuality — all in a single photo. I imagine that achieving the integration of these concepts in a single photo is something a photographer waits a lifetime for:

As Bloom himself explains, “There remains the ongoing challenge to portray life in all its manifestations, and create images that reveal the very essence of what it is to be a living being.” Check out Bloom’s amazing work at his website, www.stevebloom.com.

Please set your DVR and watch this incredible testament to the integrated, interspecies, intertwined relationships between red knot shore birds, horseshoe crabs, and humans.

Sunday at 8pm on PBS. Check your local listings (or click here) for more information.

I have updated the Practical Ethics Gallery with fresh images from the work of Rob Hite. Here is an extract from the gallery text. Please stop in and see his wonderful work by clicking here.

cheers, Bill

~~~

Rob’s early work routinely depicts people and animals through painting. The people are physically invisible in our field of view but are nonetheless manifest through their constructions. And the constructions are almost always juxtaposed and integrated into a landscape of animals and wildish nature. In my previous introduction to Rob’s gallery, I described this as a theme of ‘dwelling in mixed communities’. For Rob, dwelling is about people and animals living in natural and cultural landscapes. His art prefigures a vibrant vision of a mixed community of beings who are human and non-human, wild and domestic.

I think much of his latter work manifests this same vision, if in a different way. Take for example the sculpture and photography project, ‘Imagined Histories’. Here Rob creates sculptures of dwellings with a mythical sensibility, installs them in the landscape of the Hudson River Valley, and photographs the result. Displays of both the sculptures and photos are then shown in galleries around the Northeast. It is a beautiful body of art, some of which is shown here.

These sculptures and photographs are not adequately interpreted in terms of landscape art or sustainability alone. Rather Rob visually resituates human endeavours as part of a more than human world. He depicts humans as the animals we are, embedded in all we do in the natural world, dwelling amongst and with other creatures. He implies this through the scale of the sculptures, and the wildish looking locales in which they are photographed. His whimsical, mythological forms allow us to step back from current architecture and landscape development. To remember bedtime stories and ethnographic traditions of animal-friendly cultures, real or imagined. To envision other possibilities for living on earth.

Rob scales us down to size, visually, aesthetically and morally. He envisions a more humble humanity. And in so doing, he reveals an aesthetic and ethical landscape where we might live in a truly mixed community of people, animals and nature.

Image: Robert Hite. Bird Trap. 2006. Wood construction.

Who’s Looking?

A collaborative, multi-disciplinary investigation of human relations to chimpanzees.

The exhibition is open to the public from 1200 to Saturday, November 3rd through Sunday, December 2nd, 2007

Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery (South Gallery)
Center for the Arts
Wesleyan University
Middletown, CT 06459

Hours: Tuesday through Sunday, 12:00 to 4:00 pm.
Directions: www.wesleyan.edu/cfa/directions.html.

‘Chimpanzees, more than any other non-human animal, stir something deep and conflicted within us. This appears to be the case whether the encounter is live or whether it is mediated through representations. During the month of November 2007, Who’s Looking? will provide the Wesleyan community with opportunities to explore our complex relations to our next of kin through photographs, film, theater and words’

The exhibition includes photographs by Frank Noelker Chimp Portraits 2002-2006, and a photo installation by Lori Gruen A Family Portrait 1920-2007.

Panel Discussion: Friday, 03 November 2007, 1130-1330. .
‘Re/Presenting Animals’ with Kari Weil, Cynthia Freeland, Frank Noelker, Allison Argo
Usdan University Center, Room 108

Please visit the Who’s Looking website and have a look. See too the article on Who’s Looking, ‘Emotions Stirred at Multi-Disciplinary Investigation of Human Relations to Chimpanzees’, in the Wesleyan Connection. In addition, Lori Gruen and Frank Noelker have related websites at http://first100chimps.wesleyan.edu, and www.franknoelker.com.

cheers, Bill

cheers, Bill

Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

cheers, Bill

Mechanical Animals
Death and Decay (also including plants)
Animals: The Beautiful and the Ugly
Metamorphosis
Intelligent Design?

Submissions are open to visual arts, academic and non academic text. We are also very interested in receiving suggestions on other topics that may be of interest to our readers.

All the very best,

Giovanni Aloi
Editor of Antennae Project
Lecturer in History of Art and Media Studies
www.antennae.org.uk

I apologize for being a bit late on this, but I have been traveling.

Robert Hite is an amazing artists and I encourage you to see his work live if you can. If you can’t physically get there, you can view more of his art in the Practical Ethics Gallery or at his own roberthite.com.

cheers, Bill

Our presentations generated a dynamic and spirited discussion about the authenticity of the animal voice in fiction. Some audience members clung to the notion that anthropomorphism is a dirty word. This perspective is not uncommon, so while it was frustrating to have to defend the concept of inhabiting the mind of an animal, it was also useful to be reminded that anthropomorphism is a tool which meets resistance, even within the animal studies community. Those voices of dissent against our panel represented people who believe that the nonhuman experience of life is so foreign to our own that it is impossible for us to relate to them in any genuine way. I find this perspective very limiting, both artistically and politically. The audience members seemed to suggest we don’t have the imagination to explore what it might be like to be a nonhuman. I agree that a dog has a very unique way of seeing the world because of his or her reliance on olfactory sensations, but it would be sad to think we couldn’t even imagine such a unique way of seeing. The disquieting perspective of our human audience members relied very heavily on the differences between humans and nonhumans, and all but extinguished the similarities. This world view has the potential to extend beyond the creative realm and enter into very real policy concerns. How could we pretend to make laws, policies or decisions that claim to be in the animals’ best interests, if we cannot imagine what those interests might be? This is a circular and dangerous form of logic that can potentially threaten the limited progress we’ve made on behalf of animals.

Nevertheless, this discussion was just the start of a compelling weekend which brought together scholars from many different disciplines. With many thanks to conference organizer Susan McHugh (University of New England), animals played a significant role in panels and presentations throughout the conference.

I’m raising this point because of a Very Special Episode of Grey’s Anatomy the other week, in which one of the doctors (an MD for humans) saves a deer. The episode addresses the issue of childhood attachment to animals. It can potentially be read for its commentary on the legitimacy of adult empathy for nonhumans. However, in discussing the episode with my husband, I realized that the more interesting issue at hand was expressed in a question I posed: Would people stop taking me seriously as a writer and animal advocate if I wrote about a trashy soap-opera like Grey’s Anatomy? It seemed to me that the answer, yet again, was a resounding yes.

So here is the dilemma: latent and explicit meanings embedded in pop culture can reveal societal paradigms in their purest form, yet pop culture is often viewed as mindless entertainment that is devoid of greater worth. How can these intertwined and opposing viewpoints be resolved? To start with, by establishing why pop culture is worthwhile.

In the book From Art to Politics: How Artistic Creations Shape Political Conceptions (1995), author Murray Edelman explains how and why art and popular culture can provide insight into every day life. Edelman says that “part of the meaning of artistic talent is the ability to sense feelings, ideas, and beliefs that are widespread in society in some latent form, perhaps as deep structures or perhaps as unconscious feelings, and to objectify them in a compelling way (p 52).” If art synthesizes basic beliefs, then scholars ought to be able to learn a great deal from studying art.

To summarize some of Edelman’s relevant points, what we see and hear is constructed and influenced by imagery that we all have acess to. This means that in addition to personal interpretations of art, our culture has a collective understanding of images as well. This is what makes art an integral part of political behavior, attitudes, virtues and vices. When art and the mind are applied to real world situations, they can influence and transform beliefs about the social world, problems, solutions, hopes, fears, past, present, and future. Kitsch art, “art that sentimentalizes everyday experiences (p. 29),” has just as profound an impact on the social and political world as any other form of art. And kitsch art, more than any other form of art, leads to a unique dilemma.

The study of popular culture (kitsch in particular) suffers from an unusual problem. A lot of pop culture art — not all, but a lot — lacks quality. It is not often that a field of study is generated from lackluster product. In the study of popular culture, scholars ask their audience to accept the intellectual rigor of their research, even though the topic of their study may have none. Unfortunately, in the eyes of many critics, the scholar’s ranking as a legitimate academic is only justified by the quality of his subject of study. For instance, an academic who writes about the Sopranos might be warmly received because of the artistic merit of the TV show, whereas an academic who writes about Grey’s Anatomy would get the cold shoulder because the show’s ambitions go no further than entertainment. And yet, there might be as much useful commentary generated from fluff about Meredith and McDreamy as there is from Tony and his gang. Again, it’s the integrity of the analysis, not the quality of the art being viewed, that ought to determine academic worth.

It is dangerous when scholarship is judged by the subject or topic being studied, and not by the academic rigor of the research. Yet, this does happen, and anyone in the field of human-animal studies has intimate knowledge of this idiosyncrasy. Because animals are not taken seriously as a worthwhile academic interest (aside from biological) many scholars in human-animal studies experience a lack of respect for their work — even if the quality of their studies are stellar. When the study of animals is combined with the study of popular culture, scholars may be digging themselves into an academic grave.

Steve Baker, author of Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity and Representation (2001) offers a perspective that compliments Edelman’s theories about pop culture. Baker asserts, “much of our understanding of human identity and our thinking about the living animal reflects — and may even be the rather direct result of — the diverse uses to which the concept of the animal is put in popular culture, regardless of how bizarre or banal some of those uses may seem (p. 4).” Like Edelman, Baker places value in even the most frivolous imagery of popular culture representations. Using a butter TV commercial and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as examples, he explains that any understanding of animals is reliant on our understanding of their cultural representations. Baker explains that animal imagery is purely a human construction and is not an accessible reality. Thus, understanding greater cultural mentality about animals will come from exploring the meaning, both latent and explicit, in these manufactured representations.

Without placing judgments on either the symbolic animal or the real animal, it is possible to recognize value in exploring their qualities as mutually informing influences. For example, it is almost impossible to interact with a live pig without thinking (consciously or not) of the charming personality of Babe, Wilbur or Gordy. The childish voice and do-gooder nature of these pigs have created a lasting mythology around the innocent kindness of an entire species. This symbolism is based on fictitious human-made creatures, but the influence on the real is undeniable. The artistic quality of the films from which these pigs came is subject to debate. But the truth is, Babe, Wilbur and Gordy do not have to come from artistic masterpieces in order to generate, influence or reflect cultural attitudes towards animals. It is for this reason that scholars ought spend time evaluating and theorizing about popular culture and, in particular, instances of animals in popular culture — even if such studies are tantamount to academic suicide.

To return to the question with which I began this essay: Is it possible to use theory and intellect to draw deeply complicated conclusions about silly, simply pop culture art? I’ll reiterate again, yes. I’ve outlined here some of the many reasons why. But finally, let’s return to the question that began my thoughts on this subject: Would people stop taking me seriously as a writer and animal advocate if I wrote about a trashy soap-opera like Grey’s Anatomy? Unfortunately, I think the answer is still yes, but perhaps with room for change.

Citations:
Baker, S. (2001). Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity and Representation. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Edelman, M.J. (1995) From Art to Politics: How Artistic Creations Shape Political Conceptions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Regan, L.J. (2001). What is Mr. Winkle? New York: Random House.

Enjoy!

–Lisa

Lisa received her undergraduate degree in political autobiography from Hampshire College. This academic foundation in writing and women’s studies led to active participation in the reproductive rights movement as a freelance writer. However, Lisa found her real passion when she discovered her interest in nonhuman primate welfare, cognition and rights. She is fascinated by the cultural boundary between nonhuman apes and humans, a boundary that has profound legal ramifications for all animals.This focus on nonhuman primates began in 2001 when Lisa started working at Helping Hands: Monkey Helpers for the Disabled. This is an organization which breeds, raises and trains capuchin monkeys to help severely disabled individuals. Despite leaving the organization in 2006 to pursue her master’s degree, she maintains a close relationship with the non-profit and has taken on the role of foster mom to a monkey. Her personal relationship with this monkey (and all monkeys she has befriended) has an ongoing influence on all her pursuits in human-animal studies.

Lisa’s musings on animals in art and popular culture can be found here on Practical Ethics, as well as her blog Animal Inventory, http://animalinventory.net/.

You can contact Lisa at 617-750-5611 or via email at lisabrown@animalinventory.net.

(Photo by Nicole V. Hill)

Melissa Miller doesn’t play by the rules. She has willingly committed serious sins for a contemporary American artist: She paints animals, she composes narratives and allegories, she deals openly with sentiment and feeling, her sources are in both Asian and European art, her treatment of nature is not mediated or ironic, and she lives in Texas. …

Never obvious or one-note, Miller’s paintings enjoy a poetic ambiguity that generates feeling and sparks the imagination. Despite various shifts in style over the years, the open-ended lyricism of her work has remained a constant. After achieving acclaim in the early 80s for action-packed narratives set in lush imaginary pastures, oceans, and jungles, she turned to more symbol-laden allegories, including supernatural and spectral creatures. In more recent paintings and watercolors, she has presented pastoral tableaux that demonstrate a becalmed, prescriptive serenity. Miller’s development evinces her continuing engagement with the natural world, one that reflects our complex and often contradictory relationships with animals. …

After the turmoil of her earlier paintings, Miller’s pacific settings seem well earned. These are the mature reflections of more than two decades of thinking about the role of animals in our culture and the hierarchy of power in society. The tolerance portrayed in the works depends on the domesticated animals’ transcendence of violent instincts, primal fears, and rivalries of breed. The tranquil, trouble-free groupings describe a barnyard utopia that clearly might serve as a model for our species. Presented with good-natured, deadpan humor, Miller’s pastoral paintings realize a fanciful wish fulfillment, a vision of peace in our own back forty. …

Miller’s paintings explore issues basic to both beast and man, such as power, instinct, affection, transformation, fantasy, tolerance, and betrayal. Shaping allegorical tableaux through her poetic sensibility, Miller has created a complex body of work that melds our experiences with those of other species, reflecting the symbiotic relationship of all living things.

The paintings, by Melissa Miller, and text, by Michael Duncan, a corresponding editor for Art in America, are from the book Melissa Miller, just published by the University of Texas Press. (http://chronicle.com, 15 June 2007, Section: The Chronicle Review, Volume 53, Issue 41, Page B15)

You can see more of her work online at websites like www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/miller_melissa.html.

Photos: Melissa Miller, 2000, Sheep, oil on canvas; Melissa Miller, 1985, Zebras and Hyenas, oil on canvas.

The Worcester Art Museum (WAM) may be small by the standards of the Met, British Museum or Louvre. Nevertheless, it is amazingly well appointed and a visual pleasure. As noted in a previous post two of my main interests in art are the depiction of animals and landscapes. The WAM is filled with treasures on this account. Here is one of its gems — ‘Earth Mother’ by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Encaustic on Panel, 1882.

According to the WAM catalogue:

Burne-Jones was a second-generation member of the pre-Raphaelite artists, who rejected the growing materialization of industrialized England. Instead they focused on the comparative simplicity of the medieval world and the art of Italian painters prior to Raphael. Earth Mother, which shows the influence of Renaissance artists like Botticelli, was painted by Burne-Jones in connection with his series of stained-glass windows representing the planets. Here is an allusion to Earth Mother’s role of nurturing all life: human, represented by the child; animal, by the wolf; and horticultural, by the trees and vegetation. The snake next to the feet of Earth Mother symbolizes fertility and relates to Ceres, goddess of earth. To show earth’s role in the transitional nature of water, the allegorical figure is represented holding up a blue jar that produces clouds, rain, and eventually a stream below. To create the ivory like skin of the figures and the rich textures throughout, Burne-Jones employed the ancient technique of encaustic. The pigments are bound in a wax medium, over which the artist applied oil glazes and, in certain areas, minute touches of gold for an even more decorative effect.

Two interpretations sprang to my mind when viewing this painting. The first is its neo-pagan sensibilities. Of all the European religions, old and new, neo-paganism may have the most to teach us about animals, animality and nature-society relations. This is not because the old religions necessarily valued animals in an especial moral way, although some did. Rather it is because neo-paganist paradigms for understanding people, animals and nature use the body as a metaphor for individual, social, and ecological wholeness, integrity, health and well-being. Certainly a far more congenial metaphor than machine, cybernetic device or social construction. The second is of course the wolf and the snake. Both creatures have been reviled in Western thinking about animals and nature. Yet here they participate as valued member of a mixed community of humans and other animals, a broader body politic so to speak.

And note the wolf’s eyes. She’s looking at you…

cheers, Bill

A funny story. A couple of years ago I was at a conference at Oxford University. I spent some of my free time at the Ashmolean Museum. The ‘Ash’ is a venerable institution, the oldest public museum in England, and an artistic repository of Empire. Parts of the museum are like walking through a garden shop, it being so full of a hodge-podge of objects looted from across the world. While walking about, I noticed a stunning array of animal art, much of it from a time of exploration when traditional creation stories about the animal order were being challenged by the natural histories and geographical expeditions of the time. I tried to talk to one of the curators about this. She smiled indulgently and intoned, ‘We don’t do animal art. That is for children’. Hmm…. You can visit the Ashmolean at www.ashmol.ox.ac.uk.

In contrast, Gregory Colbert does animal art, and I think you’ll find his ‘Ashes and Snow’ exhibit remarkable. In an NPR story, Margot Adler provides an extraordinarily sensitive review. Adler alludes to the spiritual, sensorial and even sensual aspects of the exhibit. Her interviews draw forth a wide set of reactions to animals — respect for non-human others; sadness at the loss of biodiversity; the possibility of peacably dwelling with wild beings. I came to a fuller awareness about our ethical responsibilities to others because of the attentions of a feral cat, and Adler’s story struck a resonant cord in me. It may with you. For Adler’s narrative and a gallery of images, please visit www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4651380. For the exhibit website, www.ashesandsnow.org.

cheers, Bill

cheers, Bill