THIS IS NOT A HORSE229been rendered into a fur coat.^23 In this context, taxidermy functions as
the quintessential seal of what is simultaneously present and absent.
The horse mannequin is of the kind used in contemporary taxidermy
practice—a polyurethane, machine-produced, ready-made item available
in multiples and cast in a variety of sizes.^24 It symbolizes commodified
animality—the polyurethane it is made of is the incarnation of the relent-
less industrial optimization of plastic materials that in the 1950s was driven
by a desire to reduce production costs and heighten flexibility and versatil-
ity. Against this backdrop, the visible absence of animal skin performs a
series of nonaffirmative operations, enacting a signifying fluidity that ir-
reparably unhinges the relationship between image and language, between
seeing and saying. Thus presented, the mannequin at once transgresses the
aesthetic prescriptions of the classical natural history specimen and trophy
taxidermy. It simultaneously summons a ghostly horsiness, evoking the
imposing equestrian monument one second and a miniature toy cavalry
steed the next. This ontological flickering appears further accentuated by
the absence of a rider—that which in the classical iconography of eques-
trian portraiture constituted the narrativizing element: the human whose
presence links the animal body to a historical event or ideological value.
The nakedness of the taxidermy mannequin is only partial; a furry
mass covers its head. This mass is a fur coat haphazardly hanging from
the mannequin’s head—a configuration that suggests a careless and
rushed human intervention. However, at play in the positioning of this
luxury object within the assemblage is, once again, problematic tension
between the affirmative and the nonaffirmative operated on the elusive
boundaries of figuration and abstraction. From a certain viewing angle
only, the fur coat casts the unexpected image of a dog’s head. This vision,
akin to anamorphic imagery in classical art, materializes a prosthetic
head and thus suspends the whole assemblage in an ontological blurring
between the aesthetic clarity of the natural history specimen and the
mythological chimerical apparition. In Rethinking Art History, Donald
Preziosi discusses the phenomenon of anamorphism in classical paint-
ings, such as Holbein’s The Ambassadors (1533)^25 as an absence/presence
apparatus; one that manages the mutually exclusive coexistence of two
perspectival constructions (time/space dimensions) assigning two very
distinct viewing positions to the beholder, in the place of the single one
typical of quattrocento painting.^26