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Animalibus: Of Animals and Cultures
The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing
From sixteenth-century cabinets of wonders to contemporary animal art, The Breathless Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing examines the cultural and poetic history of preserving animals in lively postures. But why would anyone want to preserve an animal, and what is this animal-thing now? Rachel Poliquin suggests that taxidermy is entwined with the enduring human longing to find meaning with and within the natural world. Her study draws out the longings at the heart of taxidermy―the longing for wonder, beauty, spectacle, order, narrative, allegory, and remembrance. In so doing, The Breathless Zoo explores the animal spectacles desired by particular communities, human assumptions of superiority, the yearnings for hidden truths within animal form, and the loneliness and longing that haunt our strange human existence, being both within and apart from nature.
272 pages, Paperback
First published July 12, 2012
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554 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 31, 2022
an interesting read about the cultural desire for taxidermy, but honestly found it a bit boring and difficult to get through. though it did deliver on some very interesting historical taxidermy.
May 1, 2020
"...all taxidermy is deeply marked by human longing." A statement that truley sums up this book.
Taxidermy is a subject I am incredibly fascinated by and enjoy learning and reading about. This was an incredibly thought-provoking and "quiet" contemplative novel to read. Poliquin looks at taxidermy through an incredibly small lens and gives the gruesome subject matter a rather poetic light, while also not glossing over the hard fact it is a cathedral of death.
"All taxidermy renders animals immortal"
This is not a long read, and the author respects her audience with loving attention to detail. This is a book worth your time to hear Poliquin's voice on a dusty subject matter. She weaves a beautiful narrative about humanity and our need to collect and consume the world around us.
The visuals are visceral, but beautiful and interesting. Definitely a book someone with an interest in natural history and human psychology would enjoy.
"...these animals from a previous generation form part of our heritage of how we came to know the natural world."
Taxidermy is a subject I am incredibly fascinated by and enjoy learning and reading about. This was an incredibly thought-provoking and "quiet" contemplative novel to read. Poliquin looks at taxidermy through an incredibly small lens and gives the gruesome subject matter a rather poetic light, while also not glossing over the hard fact it is a cathedral of death.
"All taxidermy renders animals immortal"
This is not a long read, and the author respects her audience with loving attention to detail. This is a book worth your time to hear Poliquin's voice on a dusty subject matter. She weaves a beautiful narrative about humanity and our need to collect and consume the world around us.
The visuals are visceral, but beautiful and interesting. Definitely a book someone with an interest in natural history and human psychology would enjoy.
"...these animals from a previous generation form part of our heritage of how we came to know the natural world."
December 20, 2023
“No doubt there are many idiosyncratic motives, but I offer seven incentives—what I call narratives of longing—that impel the creation of taxidermy: wonder, beauty, spectacle, order, narrative, allegory, and remembrance” (7).
“As part of his larger work on poetry, La deca ammirabile, published in 1587, Francesco Patrizi lists twelve sources of wonder available to the poet: ignorance, fable, novelty, paradox, augmentation, departure from the usual, the extranatural, the divine, great utility, the very precises, the unexpected, and the sudden. For Patrizi, wonder was a shocking encounter with obscurity tinged with delicious anticipation. It was the tingling experience of going back and forth between what our reason tells us cannot be so and what our eyes cannot deny is so. when something new and unexpected appears before us, Patriti explains, it ‘creates a movement in our soul, almost contradictory in itself of believing and not believing. Of believing because the thing is seen to exist; and of not believing because it is sudden, new, and not before either known, though, or believed able to exist. ’ Even the usual could provoke wonder if its appearance was somehow unexpected: a shadow, for example strangely enlarged and looming up a wall could momentarily disorient. In other words, wonderful objects were not merely seen but experienced as visceral and emotional events” (19).
“If Victorian taxidermy clashes with current sensibilities, in great part it is because the meaning of animal beauty has been redefined. Killing an animal in order to admire it is now almost a contradiction in terms. I n other words, just as a romantic, spiritualized sensibility marked the nineteenth century’s natural aesthetic, ecological concerns about species loss have come to characterize our evaluations of animal beauty today. Of course, in contrast to nature photography or even zoos, taxidermy is an extreme, deathly encounter with animals. But taxidermy is not motivated to destroy or mar animal form but to preserve it” (55).
“At least until the mid-eighteenth century, scientific inquiry was not distinct from aesthetic appreciation” (57).
--p.61-62 explains the astonishing TWO OCELOTS
“Any Victorian household would have at least one or two stuffed birds under glass, along with some small natural history collection: pressed ferns on the parlor wall, a collection of butterflies, or at least a few shells, feathers, or minerals” (68).
“Waterton argued that Horace’s instructions for poets, which encouraged them to access the vital core of their characters’ moral fiber, were equally germane to taxidermists” (74).
“In a sense, collections are choreographed performances, and each collected item emboldens the fantasy” (80).
“The average lifespan of big cats in the early years of London’s Zoological Gardens (opened in 1828) was about two years, which meant that one lion, tiger, leopard or puma died each month” (89).
“Artistic taxidermy was still considered scientific—it still faithfully presented beasts—but the science of natural history was blurred with emotion” (94).
“Comparing your size to the size of a moose or a hummingbird, or seeing the shape of a wombat or a pygmy hippopotamus, is always startling. There is something very personal about encountering an animal face to face, even if dead, even if taxidermied, even if behind glass” (136).
“If tombstones are commissioned from grief, trophies are commissioned from triumph” (150-51).
“In a sense, trophies epitomize everything that is disliked about taxidermy in general. All taxidermy makes death overt, but just heads are decidedly deader” (151).
“Abhorrence is understandable in vegetarians, animal rights activists, and any community that believes there is no excuse for killing an animal. But for meat eaters and anyone who owns leather shoes, bags, or furniture, the sharp negative reaction to taxidermy is less straightforward. What is the difference between a steak, a belt, and a trophy in all cases an animal has been killed, dissected, and shaped, and yet a distinction exists in contemporary opinion. What makes hunting trophies so particularly objectionable.
[…]
Adverse reactions to trophies potentially highlights a hypocrisy for anyone who routinely uses products from purposely killed animals. From shoes, to baseball mitts, to cooking shows on television, it is impossible to live a day without encountering animal parts” (151).
HUNTING and how it is defined, “First, the animal must be wild, as opposed to domesticated and docile, and able to run away; killing a dairy cow or a lion in a zoo is not hunting….” (156).
“Anthropomorphic taxidermy offers a queasy material fable of human supremacy wrapped up in witty cuteness. The humor is not a knowing humor of dark truths revealed with deceptive simplicity, but rather the unsettling drollery of dead bunnies doing sums” (189).
“After all, taxidermy is as much an encounter as an animal-thing” (194).
“By the mid-nineteenth century, dogs in particular had become the cliché accessories to modern life, and dog breeds continued to mushroom throughout that century into the next. In 1788 the French naturalist George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon described fourteen breeds. By the end of the nineteenth century, more than two hundred breeds could be distinguished: sheepdogs, Great Danes, bulldogs, collies, proliferating sub-breeds of poodles and lapdogs, all reflecting their owners’ class, style, and sensibilities” (206).
“As part of his larger work on poetry, La deca ammirabile, published in 1587, Francesco Patrizi lists twelve sources of wonder available to the poet: ignorance, fable, novelty, paradox, augmentation, departure from the usual, the extranatural, the divine, great utility, the very precises, the unexpected, and the sudden. For Patrizi, wonder was a shocking encounter with obscurity tinged with delicious anticipation. It was the tingling experience of going back and forth between what our reason tells us cannot be so and what our eyes cannot deny is so. when something new and unexpected appears before us, Patriti explains, it ‘creates a movement in our soul, almost contradictory in itself of believing and not believing. Of believing because the thing is seen to exist; and of not believing because it is sudden, new, and not before either known, though, or believed able to exist. ’ Even the usual could provoke wonder if its appearance was somehow unexpected: a shadow, for example strangely enlarged and looming up a wall could momentarily disorient. In other words, wonderful objects were not merely seen but experienced as visceral and emotional events” (19).
“If Victorian taxidermy clashes with current sensibilities, in great part it is because the meaning of animal beauty has been redefined. Killing an animal in order to admire it is now almost a contradiction in terms. I n other words, just as a romantic, spiritualized sensibility marked the nineteenth century’s natural aesthetic, ecological concerns about species loss have come to characterize our evaluations of animal beauty today. Of course, in contrast to nature photography or even zoos, taxidermy is an extreme, deathly encounter with animals. But taxidermy is not motivated to destroy or mar animal form but to preserve it” (55).
“At least until the mid-eighteenth century, scientific inquiry was not distinct from aesthetic appreciation” (57).
--p.61-62 explains the astonishing TWO OCELOTS
“Any Victorian household would have at least one or two stuffed birds under glass, along with some small natural history collection: pressed ferns on the parlor wall, a collection of butterflies, or at least a few shells, feathers, or minerals” (68).
“Waterton argued that Horace’s instructions for poets, which encouraged them to access the vital core of their characters’ moral fiber, were equally germane to taxidermists” (74).
“In a sense, collections are choreographed performances, and each collected item emboldens the fantasy” (80).
“The average lifespan of big cats in the early years of London’s Zoological Gardens (opened in 1828) was about two years, which meant that one lion, tiger, leopard or puma died each month” (89).
“Artistic taxidermy was still considered scientific—it still faithfully presented beasts—but the science of natural history was blurred with emotion” (94).
“Comparing your size to the size of a moose or a hummingbird, or seeing the shape of a wombat or a pygmy hippopotamus, is always startling. There is something very personal about encountering an animal face to face, even if dead, even if taxidermied, even if behind glass” (136).
“If tombstones are commissioned from grief, trophies are commissioned from triumph” (150-51).
“In a sense, trophies epitomize everything that is disliked about taxidermy in general. All taxidermy makes death overt, but just heads are decidedly deader” (151).
“Abhorrence is understandable in vegetarians, animal rights activists, and any community that believes there is no excuse for killing an animal. But for meat eaters and anyone who owns leather shoes, bags, or furniture, the sharp negative reaction to taxidermy is less straightforward. What is the difference between a steak, a belt, and a trophy in all cases an animal has been killed, dissected, and shaped, and yet a distinction exists in contemporary opinion. What makes hunting trophies so particularly objectionable.
[…]
Adverse reactions to trophies potentially highlights a hypocrisy for anyone who routinely uses products from purposely killed animals. From shoes, to baseball mitts, to cooking shows on television, it is impossible to live a day without encountering animal parts” (151).
HUNTING and how it is defined, “First, the animal must be wild, as opposed to domesticated and docile, and able to run away; killing a dairy cow or a lion in a zoo is not hunting….” (156).
“Anthropomorphic taxidermy offers a queasy material fable of human supremacy wrapped up in witty cuteness. The humor is not a knowing humor of dark truths revealed with deceptive simplicity, but rather the unsettling drollery of dead bunnies doing sums” (189).
“After all, taxidermy is as much an encounter as an animal-thing” (194).
“By the mid-nineteenth century, dogs in particular had become the cliché accessories to modern life, and dog breeds continued to mushroom throughout that century into the next. In 1788 the French naturalist George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon described fourteen breeds. By the end of the nineteenth century, more than two hundred breeds could be distinguished: sheepdogs, Great Danes, bulldogs, collies, proliferating sub-breeds of poodles and lapdogs, all reflecting their owners’ class, style, and sensibilities” (206).
July 6, 2013
Beautifully written and fascinating history of taxidermy. Poliquin's reflections on the practice are thoughtful and intriguing and I found lots to ponder here. In addition, this book gets a little bump in its rating for being a lovely physical artifact.
February 1, 2019
Beautifully written and designed, thoroughly researched, and full of stories and philosophy that makes you think.
As a taxidermy enthusiast this was definitely an interesting read, though for anyone not completely enthralled by dead animals, it may easily seem too gruesome and lengthy. It’s a niche piece.
4/5 stars because I do wish the author had been less repetitive, it could’ve been much more enjoyable tightened up a bit.
As a taxidermy enthusiast this was definitely an interesting read, though for anyone not completely enthralled by dead animals, it may easily seem too gruesome and lengthy. It’s a niche piece.
4/5 stars because I do wish the author had been less repetitive, it could’ve been much more enjoyable tightened up a bit.
March 12, 2022
Truly lovely, unsettling, and haunting. Beautifully written and poignant. Teared up towards the end.
“…With loss comes remembrance and with remembrance a longing for the departed and their absence, a sentimental yearning for a token, an object, something that can be felt and touched: a material souvenir of what is no longer but lingers everlastingly in memory.” (199)
“…With loss comes remembrance and with remembrance a longing for the departed and their absence, a sentimental yearning for a token, an object, something that can be felt and touched: a material souvenir of what is no longer but lingers everlastingly in memory.” (199)
August 24, 2017
This book is both sad and uplifting, unsettling and charming, poetic and informative - just like the art of taxidermy itself. Some chapters could use a bit of pruning, but in general it's an easy and enjoyable read. Definitely one of the TOP5 nonfiction books I've read this year.
Read
November 12, 2019Sorry I clicked on the wrong book.
January 22, 2025
very interesting history on taxidermy and it's connections to society and longing
January 20, 2013
This is a really excellent, academic look at what taxidermy is, what it means, and how it is a reflection of its historical moment. However, I found that after the first few chapters I got bored. There's only so much one can read about gazing upon the skins of dead animals and what that says about us. The pictures in this book are beautiful. I really enjoyed looking at all the full colour plates. That's probably deeply ironic. Here I am, more interested in gazing upon pictures of the skins of dead animals than reading about why that gaze is meaningful.
If I were still marking papers in grad school I would give this book an A+. It's well thought out, carefully researched, and contains lots of really fascinating readings of animal bodies and our desire to preserve them for human view and consumption. But the bottom line is that it just couldn't sustain my interest over time. The balance of theory to story started to get too much for me and I ended up skimming a large portion of this towards the end.
Really worth looking at though.
If I were still marking papers in grad school I would give this book an A+. It's well thought out, carefully researched, and contains lots of really fascinating readings of animal bodies and our desire to preserve them for human view and consumption. But the bottom line is that it just couldn't sustain my interest over time. The balance of theory to story started to get too much for me and I ended up skimming a large portion of this towards the end.
Really worth looking at though.
August 19, 2014
This is a beautifully presented book, of interest to practising taxidermists as well as those simply curious about this art form.
The essays can be overly academic and a little bit repetitive at times, but are generally easy to read. Very informative and well researched, The Breathless Zoo really gets under the skin of taxidermy.
The essays can be overly academic and a little bit repetitive at times, but are generally easy to read. Very informative and well researched, The Breathless Zoo really gets under the skin of taxidermy.
October 18, 2013
a bit repetitive at times specifically in phrasing, but a very engaging theory of taxidermy.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews