I found out something last night that quite literally changed my life. Yup, it was a life changing day. No I didn't get laid off or fired for a change, or even cheated on, or lied to, by another 'baker. Not anything even remotely so trivial.
For me it was something so monumentally wrong, and about someone I have adored all my life, and admired, and held in the deepest reverence possible, except maybe for a god, or something like that.
I found out that John James Audubon killed all of the birds he painted, before he pinned them to a display board, where he would literally spend days sticking their beaks, their feathers, their expressions even with pins, to pose them in specific positions to make them appear more "lifelike".
He killed every single bird he ever drew. He shot them in the back of their heads, so as to not make a bloody mess of their faces.
He killed them for his own personal monetary gain. He killed them to make his paintings more realistic than his contemporaries. He killed them to publish books. He killed them for his own pleasure. He killed the one thing I always believed he cherished.
He opened the door for me to discover them, to escape to their world, to share in it, to find some incredible fucking beauty in an otherwise pretty shitty world.
It allowed me to experience freedom and flight, peace and promise, a world very alien to me. They let me watch them soar, and pretend their world was mine, if only for fleeting moments every now and then.
They taught me their songs and their language, their culture and their ways.
The bastard.
Hence now that the ranting part is winding down, I propose that for every ignorant, bloody, bastardly, greedy slob that has ever robbed the world of even one element of it's most magnificent beauty, should be held accountable and be sentenced to die in the exact same manner that he subjected his victims to, and then to be placed on public display for all to see, forever and ever.
I'm not suggesting a discussion on the death penalty, god knows that's been done to "death" here already. What I want would be a public display board, in a library, or a museum, or somewhere like that, in the section where his "beautiful lifelike" bird paintings are housed, and children could look at his paintings and actually believe the story, and all the lies. They could believe for a moment that someone so wonderful actually devoted his entire life to capturing the endless beauty of a bird in flight.
Moments before they would then get to visit the display case, where the ugly truth would be told, and the decision to love or not, to have passion or feel nothing but indifference, would at-least be based on fact, not on a prettied up story, with streets, and buildings and monuments erected in the name of not a hero, or even a kind and humble man, but instead of a selfish, egotistical, sadistic mad man. Who had but one goal in his pathetic life, to paint better than the only other man on Earth he felt *could* draw better than him, and to sell more books than him as well.
I would like to stand in front of his display case today, and think to myself how much more lifelike, or should I say human-like he would look if only his right shoulder was pinned down with just a little bit sharper of an angle, you know, so the sunlight hitting it would look more realistic for that time of day. Or perhaps his left testicle would be more believable if it had a mole or two growing from underneath his sparse gray pubic hair.
There are others who I have wished would die in the same manner that they inflicted on their innocent victims, but never, ever did I in my worst nightmare, realize a person who held such a delicate life in the palm of his hand in one moment, could then blow the life out of him forever, for nothing but the sake of his "style" of art.
Even the insect display boards don't upset me, well not that much, because the creator doesn't spend his whole existence leading people to believe that he loves the creatures that he displays. He might even believe he is passing information down to others, so that the species can be kept from becoming extent, or be able to define and/or differentiate new strains.
But this man, who was as a god to me, had the ability and the desire, to have quite possibly, at one time or another, held the very last of a particular species of a bird in his hand, just moments prior to blowing it to extinction. Forever and ever.
Cheating humanity from *ever* being able to hear, or see, or even have the knowledge of a beautiful bird who once flew freely through the air and was brought down, shot to death and then pinned to his exact specifications, for his own egotistical legacy, making the infinate decision for all of us, to unmake what god saw fit to create.-- blissmiss, Jul 27 2007 A public display for all of eternity http://www.eduref.o...nimals/ANM0114.htmlDIY Display Boards, for those who deserve to be displayed for all to see forever and ever. Built to your own specifications of course. [blissmiss, Jul 27 2007] You give him more credit than is due him, I say. Near the end of his life when his eyesight and mind were failing him, he took to shooting anything, and everything, including almost himself once, not fot the thrill of the kill, or the abscense of any sense of morality about killing a thing, he simply loved the sound made by a shooting gun.
And the point is not that the times were different, as we all know they were far more barbaric...the point is that as a student and a lover of his paintings, I was always led to believe he painted them in their natural habitat, and that is why he took to shooting them. His competetor was able to duplicate the birds with out killing them, better than JJ could. So he killed them and faked their poses. That's the part that I hate almost as much as the killing. The deception he lived his entire life, so that his books would sell better than Watson's.-- blissmiss, Jul 27 2007 It is also important to remember that this was a time before high speed color photography. The only way to get detailed information about the bird was to get it to stand still for hours on end. Not practical with a live bird.-- Galbinus_Caeli, Jul 27 2007 See above. His biggest rival WAS able to get the same stills, actually better stills, with the birds alive and in their natural habitat. They didn't take photos that I'm aware of, atleast JJ didn't. That is why he painstakinly posed them post-mortem. So that he could take his jolly old time painting them. Which is how he reproduced his fake bird paintings.
You could sit in front of a dead bird for a couple years and never be able to recreate the realness of life looking back out at you, I would bet.-- blissmiss, Jul 27 2007 I've always known this about Audobon, but it does not diminish the achievement of this illustrations and I agree with the [Beep's] sentiments re Victorian values. There were many who even believed that animals were incapable of feeling pain in the same way as we do.
There are modern equivalents of Audobon. They carry out unnecessary experiments on animals at research labs. He killed his birds quickly. They torture theirs slowly.
Blissmiss - check out my Hunter Rug - I take orders !-- xenzag, Jul 27 2007 //Audubon was behaving quite normally for a Victorian. They had no grasp of the sadness of extinction of species; they were avid collectors and recorders.//
This reminds me of Tring, the small town where I grew up, where the Rothschilds lived. (Fun fact: they used to have zebra pull their cart instead of horses.) There's a natural history museum in town, which is basically a collection of the animals, birds, fish and insects that one particular Rothschild shot, hooked or gassed. In the museum's guide book, one phrase always stood out to me for its unintentional irony: "Lord Rothschild donated funds to establish the museum as a birthday present for his son, so that he would have somewhere to display his collection. The elder Rothschild regarded his son's interest in animals as a harmless pursuit."
Well, maybe for him...-- imaginality, Jul 27 2007 I wonder what we do now that will be condemned by our children...-- po, Jul 27 2007 yes, worryingly I understand that.-- po, Jul 27 2007 The guy with the bodies exhibition didn't do the same thing, did he? I've always worried about that-- theircompetitor, Jul 28 2007 I have never liked Audubon's drawings and now I like them less. I love birds of all kinds and though I lovingly eat chickens and ducks, I am aware that I'm taking something out of nature, and I enjoy their lives as well as their beauty and song; I would never want to keep a bird as a pet. I just want to be out there birdwatching and see them and be a part of their world for a while.
Meanwhile, Audubon's pictures - they may as well not be birds, they are so stylized. He drew them as if they were women, but a bird is not similar.-- phundug, Jul 28 2007 //He drew them as if they were women/ / don't want to start a tiresome "PC" text war - but I don't understand this phrase.
How do you draw something "as if it was a woman" and can you also draw something "as if it was a man" or even "as if it was a hungry aardvark, who had foolishly stepped across a freshly varnished floor, that had still not dried properly" ???-- xenzag, Jul 28 2007 t.c. yes, I'm afraid so.-- po, Jul 28 2007 Everyone seems to have found valid points on both sides of the subject. I was touched by [bliss]'s shock at finding out that one has been disillusioned all these years, but that is part of life. [Beep] has made some comments with mature insight. I can't seem to take a stand myself right now, so carry on 'bakers...-- xandram, Jul 28 2007 Oh, [blissmiss]. The higher you build the pedestal, the further they have to fall. [sympathy, but no vote]-- pertinax, Jul 29 2007 This seems to me to be more about the disjunction between [blissmiss]'s idea of Audubon and the reality than about Audubon being particularly cruel (for his time).[Ian] //there's a part on wider context of information, and where the elastic boundary of metadata disappears into contextual background information 'outside the frame'. But then, go further outside that layer and there's often yet another that inverts the one it encloses.// - in much the same way as some irritating, juvenile people used to add " - NOT!!" to the end of their sentences.-- hippo, Jul 30 2007 (I was so happy just to see a recent post of yours that I bunned it. Now I'll go back and read it...)
later: Oh my! How shocking and sad! What a horrible day for you, blissmiss. I can't agree with the torture and murder of the inflicter, but I will leave the bun as solace for the birds that remain.-- k_sra, Jul 31 2007 // .. Life's Little Karma Display Board .. //
Uh. Twister (game) wiki?-- reensure, Aug 03 2007 random, halfbakery