18INTRODUCTIONtoken, this book does not argue that a certain use of taxidermy in con-
temporary art might directly impact the environmental challenges we
are currently facing. But I am, nonetheless, very sure that a taxidermy
skin can at least draw the attention of those who don’t usually think about
animals and that it will bring them to consider some important condi-
tions involved in human/animal relations. In a work of contemporary
art, taxidermy constitutes a powerful semantic point of access, and if
used critically, this power can bring positive change.
Although the celebrity endorsement that made Deyrolle’s rebirth
possible has contributed to taxidermy’s renewed popularity, it surely has
not won over its detractors. Taxidermy expert Pat Morris reminds us that
the practice “went spectacularly out of fashion” in the years following
the Second World War for “what had been a source of pride and stimula-
tion for one generation was treated as dull and shameful by the next.”^13
And in The Breathless Zoo Rachel Poliquin has shown that, paradoxi-
cally, European natural history museums have begun to find taxidermy
unsuited to their current educational missions. Postcolonial, critical ap-
proaches to collecting and displaying have contextualized taxidermy as a
difficult emblem of political and cultural imperialist pasts.^14 Some Brit-
ish institutions have been asked to publicly clarify their ethical stance
on the subject, and, under pressure from funding bodies, some have sold
or destroyed part or all of their taxidermy collections.^15 This turn of
events has unfolded mainly because, to some, taxidermy has come to
overtly signify “death on display”—the indelible reminder of a “gratu-
itous spoilage of nature” that cannot be reversed.^16 At the same time, ac-
cording to others, the technological advancements in television and
color photography have also rendered taxidermy’s original function, that
of making animals visible, substantially obsolete and redundant.^17
As will be shown in chapter 1, the metanarrativizing history of taxi-
dermy has its roots in the scientific innovations and colonialist practices
of the seventeenth century. Thereafter, the craft gathered momentum
as the industrial revolution relentlessly reconfigured the boundaries
between city and countryside, nature and culture. In Europe, the increased
distancing from the natural world imposed by modernization coincided
with the rise in popularity of natural history museums and zoos as places
of encounter between culturally encoded and rationalized notions of na-
ture and audiences.^18 Back then, beyond its scientific purpose of enabling