Fur art

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"The squaring of the fur" (Cora Fisch, 2018)

Fur Art , the fur as a material of art , stepped outside the craft much the first time in 1936 with a Déjeuner en fourrure titled ( "Breakfast in Fur") fur cup of Meret Oppenheim in the visual arts in appearance. Before that, there were mainly fur mosaics , artistically designed pictures of fur from circles of the furrier trade . In addition to works of art with dominant fur , fur is occasionally found as a small addition to works of other material. One example is the “Venus with Drawers” ​​(1936/1946) by Salvador Dali exhibited in Düsseldorf's K 20 , a bronze cast in a plaster-like setting with pompom handles made of mink tail fur .

In 2016, the English artist Simon Fujiwara showed a series of pieces of fur clothing in Tokyo, where the patchwork pattern created during the production of the fur was visible on the leather side.

The Haas Brothers (Zwillinge, Nikolai and Simon Haas , * 1984) are American artists known for their sculptural works that blur the line between art and design. They currently work in Los Angeles , California. Her figurative works include a large number of "beasts", mythical creatures called beasts, whose bodies are made of fur. Thanks to the combination of high-quality materials, your creations also appear accordingly, despite their humorous appearance. They designed seating in a similar way, from fur-covered stools to sofas. The types of fur used are varied. For example, an object from 2014 offered as “Unique Tannery Pearson (Mini Beast)” with goat-like ebony horns and baroque ornate and gilded bronze legs has a body made of sable-like goat skin .

An overview from April 2019 of artists and their use of taxidermy found that the "animal revenants" keep appearing in art. In Los Angeles and New York in particular, a lively taxidermy art scene has developed, consisting mostly of young women.

General

Fur is a perishable material, so fur art is not a permanent work without special conservation measures. Like its related works made from feathers , fur is a natural product that is subject to normal natural aging. This, combined with the fading from the light, soon makes them more unsightly and, with normal presentation, destroys them in a few decades. The first fur mosaics, acquired around 1900, have now all faded in color, become brittle in the hair, or, even more likely, crumble after the leather has rotten and thus irretrievably disappeared. Only photography makes it possible to get at least one image of such works. In the museum, cooled and with minimized light, fur lasts much longer, how long remains to be seen. However, only a few particularly outstanding works of fur art receive such treatment.

Artist with significant works in fur

Fur as a material has a special meaning in art that goes beyond the design. With Merit Oppenheim's Déjeuner en fourrure , it is above all the strange feeling that arises at the thought of drinking from her hairy cup. A more mythical human-animal relationship can be found in the works of Ursula Schultze-Bluhm and Joseph Beuys . Beuys declared the lynx coat, which he himself wore, to be part of a work of art. Günter Weseler creates mysterious animal beings from fur, which he lets breathe and thus apparently revives them to life. In the meantime, the material fur is no longer used in an unselfconscious manner. In this context, artists are increasingly concerned with the question of whether humans are entitled to eat animals and use their products, such as fur. Nina Stähli used fur from worn clothing, Cora Fisch points to transitoriness by deliberately burying parts of discarded clothing.

Meret Oppenheim (1913–1985)

The German-Swiss Meret Oppenheim was best known for her legendary fur cup, created in 1936, although she created many unusual and outstanding works. The service, consisting of a cup, saucer and coffee spoon, became, as it were , her trademark during her lifetime as Déjeuner en fourrure . This probably best-known example of the surrealist objet trouvé , an everyday object that is treated like a work of art, made it “overnight, so to speak, an icon of surrealism ”.

The work, known in English as the fur teacup, consists of an ordinary department store porcelain cup with a spoon covered with the fur of a Chinese gazelle . Oppenheim herself originally called her work simply “Cup, soucoupeet cuillière revêtus de fourrure - cup, saucer and spoon covered with fur”. The name for the fur cup, which is based on the former scandalous picture “ Breakfast in the Green ” by Édouard Manet and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's novella “ Venus im Pelz ”, comes from André Breton , first published in the Almanac of the Surrealists in 1938 . Meret Oppenheim never objected to the renaming. Daniel Spoerri later found this subsequent naming to be quite successful and described the feeling that comes over him when looking at the fur cup: “[…] I think the object is so great because you can feel the fur on your tongue, and it's easy to find disgusting, phphph That hair in the mouth, that's what makes the object so great, because you can feel it immediately, you can feel this fur on your tongue, everyone has had a fur coat in their mouths. The title is typically surrealist and the object is much more sensual ”. Spoerri himself also worked with fur. In his series “Carnival of the Animals” in 1995 he draped a complete coyote coat in the style of Beuys' lynx coat , his work is entitled “Human face compared to that of the wolf”. Instead of the cast iron human head at Beuys, Spoerri decorated, among other things, the plastic of a wolf's head for a coat.

Meret Oppenheim was only 23 years old when her fur cup was shown in a group exhibition of the surrealists in Paris and then in all the important surrealist exhibitions of the year. It was then acquired by Alfred Barry for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A year later in the exhibition “Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism”, it stimulated the “imagination of tens of thousands of Americans” like no other object in the exhibition, where it “provoked anger, disgust, laughter and delight in equal measure - and became a symbol of surrealism and a key work of the 20th century ”. The déjeuner en fourrure was particularly widespread in the illustration of the photographer Man Ray .

Oppenheim's work with fur was preceded by the model of a fur-covered bangle and ring, which she was able to sell to the eccentric fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli and the Rochas fashion house, among others . The fur cup is said to have been created in response to Pablo Picasso mocking her bracelet. Around 1936 a design for a simple, fur-trimmed women's cape was also made.

Further works were a shoe with fur and beige-colored fur half-finger gloves, mounted on a hand with red lacquered nails (1936).

In 1969 the "squirrel" was created, a glass beer mug with foam made of plastic, with a squirrel's tail as a handle.

When a gallery owner wanted to publish an edition of the fur cup as a multiple in 1970 , Oppenheim refused and instead designed an ironic “Souvenir du déjeuner en fourrure” made of fabric, fur, artificial flowers and sequins under glass as a rococo image .

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986)

Joseph Beuys put the expanded concept of art , which was also included in Meret Oppenheim's Objets trouvé, even more extensive. In a way that was disturbing to many observers, he worked with natural materials such as fat and felt. The hare played a special, mystical and symbolic role for Beuys. He subsequently attached a hare's skin and the skull of a heron to the charred door of his burned down Düsseldorf studio (“Door with heron skull and rabbit ears”, 1954–1956). On his typical fishing vest he always had a hare's paw as a talisman, a classic good luck charm; During the action "I like America, America likes me", New York 1974, he wore a hare skin. In 1963 he created an untitled object with a hare's skin.

In his last major work in December 1985 for a temporary exhibition in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, named Palazzo Regale , he showed in one of two showcases, among other things, a lynx coat that he used in his performance " Titus Andronicus / Iphigenie " (1969) in The framework of the "experimenta 3" in Frankfurt am Main; Beuys can also be seen with his coat on during a skiing holiday in two photos owned by the Schmela Gallery . The exhibition opened a month before his death on December 23, 1985. The installation was purchased by the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf in 1991 and is on permanent display there.

The coat is decorated with the fur facing upwards, one front edge is turned down so that the light blue silk lining can be seen. The fact that a cast iron head is placed above the collar (from the installation “Tram Stop”) reminds of a person lying down. The coat made from Canadian lynx skins was one of the highest quality furs of the time, especially since it was mainly made from the more valuable lynx sponge. The head and coat are complemented by two concert cymbals leaning against the display window and a conch with a capped tip.

In a conversation, Beuys explained the contrast to the comparatively sparsely furnished, opposite, second display case: “[...] I wanted to highlight two elements that are always present in my work and that I believe should be included in every human act: Both that Solemn of self-determination of one's own life and gestures as well as the humility of our actions and our work in every moment ”.

Ursula Schultze-Bluhm (1921–1999)

As an autodidact, Ursula Schultze-Bluhm , artist name Ursula , was the first to deal with her folk art works on a larger scale than other artists with the material fur. Since 1951 she traveled regularly to Paris, where she was discovered in 1954 by Jean Dubuffet for his Musée de l'Art Brut . At the time, Art brut was still defined as “the autodidactic art of lay people, children and the mentally ill”, later Ursula Schultze-Bluhm, together with her husband Bernard Schultze , was classified more ambitiously under the keyword “fantastic figuration”. At the beginning of 1974 she and Bernard Schultze had an exhibition in the Rotterdam Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen with the subtitle “Dreams in Furs and Colors”.

Right from the start, Ursula combined fur with other materials. Her preoccupation with art began with making assemblages and smaller objects with fur, feathers and hair. Her mother gave her a fur coat as a child and a large cigarette case from her father, from which her first fur box was made.

Her fur house (“Ursula fur house”), which is about three meters high without the superstructure, is particularly striking. Wolfgang Sauré wrote about a photo showing the artist sitting on a fur-covered chair in the entrance of her “house”: “From the beginning of the sixties, Ursula expanded her vocubular. She combines furs, peacock feathers and objets trouvés of all kinds, pearls and glittering stones with painting and builds them into wooden boxes and cabinets that look like folding altars with utensils for black, diabolical-mysterious masses. There is definitely a penchant for the monumental and expansive. The Ursula fur house represents the climax of this tendency. It is a total work of art consisting of sculpture, painting and environment and looks like an Indian fur tent for snake charmers and sacred dancers. A precious dwelling, like a fairy tale from the Arabian Nights, in which the mysterious poisoner Ursula magically enthroned ”(Environment 1970, Märkisches Museum Witten). - Even earlier, in 1896, at the Millennium Exhibition in Budapest, an impressive “ fur house ” had attracted some attention. At that time, however, in addition to the artistic claim, it mainly served to point out the efficiency of the Budapest furrier Josef Katzer .

In the name of Pandora's box , from which, according to Greek mythology, all of the evils previously unknown to mankind such as labor, disease and death came into the world, she created various other objects, for each of which fur was also used: "Pandora's box" (1966), "Pandora Pelzkoffer" (1970, annual edition of the Kunstverein for the Rhineland and Westphalia, edition of 50 pieces), "The Pandora pants cabinet" ("Wolfgang's pants", around 1970), "Pandora cabinet with head" (1973), " The Pandora's Box of Idols ”(1980) and“ Pandora's Box ”(1996).

"The Pandora Pants Cupboard" is a coffin-like installation. Instead of a corpse, pleated trousers can be seen, and light-colored fur is draped into the inner walls of the upright object. Fur also oozes out of a torn trouser side, as well as “something like a torn fox tail”, and there are other fur and fabric applications.

A folding stool covered with blue, yellow and red fur was created in 1970. A photo of the stool also shows a number of mink tails attached to the fur. The inside of the lid contains an oil painting of a head framed by fur. A red styrofoam head with a white fur hat or wig belongs to the object . The stool contains, among other things, teeth, costume jewelry, plastic beads, labeled notes, a fur animal paw and razor blades. Razor blades embedded in the fur in Ursula's works often create a threatening contrast to the soft fur, which is actually tempting to touch. A similar object is “The Woman's Chair” (1990), made of oil, varnish, wood and different types of fur, mainly cat fur , here with an attached silver fox tail.

An auction catalog from 2005 shows an item “Untitled (Fur box with horse)”, a “colored toy horse with a fur collage” and a “box collaged with fur and a metal bell”. In addition to the fur-clad horse and a brass bell, the fur-covered box mainly contains fur necklaces . A foxtail and three or four, strongly aged necklaces of animal skins from the zoological family of the marten-like can be recognized . The so-called fur necklaces, which were very much in vogue in the first half of the 20th century and were still worn until after the Second World War, can be found more frequently in the work of Ursula. An object called “With fur and feathers” consists mainly of a double-skin mink necklace with a round mink (cap?) Arranged over it. She also used this motif in her graphics.

Wolfgang Sauré summarized: “For Ursula, fur collages represent painting with other means. They are ambiguous and symbolize the animal-instinctual, also the sensual-soft, then the primeval motherly and at the same time their opposite: the devouring, castrative threatening, whereupon iron nails hidden in the fur folds and razor blades. Ciphers and means of the adults, against whose world Ursula rebels, with her childlike unease in the technical culture. All of humanity should take refuge in an Ursula fur house. Enchantment and aggressiveness, sensuality and sadism are close together with Ursula. Velvet paws and claws, witch magic ... "

Günter Weseler (* 1930)

Günter Weseler and "La Belle et la Bête" (2018)

Breath object (video)
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Since 1966, Günter Weseler has been giving new life to the animals that were once stuck in the skins and which he calls "New Species". His "breath objects" no longer reveal the animal in its shape, but they are alive in a mysterious and often unsettling way. He placed the first of his kinetic, hemispherical field objects on a wall. Realizing that these are actually animals, he then put them in different places, in corners of the room, or, for example, based on Daniel Spoerri's Eat Art, also eaten in bread. The "animals" do not just puff up, but breathing moves through the body, is uneven, takes breaks and is greatly slowed down in relation to nature, inhalation and exhalation do not take place individually, but in one. The piles of fur take on a very different, often disturbing or even threatening character, depending on the environment in which they are shown and the person and the state of mind of the viewer. "Only the introduction of these kinetic skins into the context of assembly-related design principles or space-occupying environments opens up the whole range of contexts of meaning and possibilities of interpretation between magic, alchemy, shock, symbolism, mystery and wit ..."

In the beginning it was individual objects, but Weseler soon moved on to larger installations, "overgrowths" of walls. The materials he got himself initially were hare and rex rabbit skins , and shaggy sheepskins were soon added, especially from Yugoslav and Icelandic sheep and heather sheep . In order to produce his objects inexpensively, Weseler covered them with fur himself.

In 1969 he created an ensemble of five birdcages hanging from the ceiling, each with a breathing sheepskin creature. Weseler put his creatures in a sink, on a worn tapestry (1980), "as a lump on a woman's neck or as a nightmare in a cot". In the first breath objects, a VW windscreen wiper motor served as the drive. The mechanics can be heard from the background, but some of the works are underlaid with masking noises. From the animal-filled spout you can hear a “pulling slurp”, at “Pan's court” a “bucolic peal”. For these effects and for the mechanical inner workings of motor-driven control disks and levers, he certainly benefited from his training as a radio mechanic. In the “Hof des Pan” there is a “head breather” (1967–1974) in a metal child's bed , only the arms and legs of a celluloid doll can be seen, the body and seamlessly the part of the head is formed by a hare's skin. In a cradle next to the child's head, cuddly and at the same time threatening, lies one of his breathing creatures (imitation fur ?, 2011; exhibition “Fly me to the moon”, 2013). As an allusion to Oppenheim's fur cup, one can see a broken cup in which one of his fur knobs has settled. The suggestion for this object “We'll tak 'a cup o' Kindness…” (1975) came from a one-armed Düsseldorf art collector who had invited various artists to work with cups.

In 1969, Weseler created an unlimited edition of an "object for breathing training", a fur-covered plastic box with a balloon. Peter Schmieder wrote about this multiple object: “Action and movement are central terms when experiencing this work by Weseler. Without active blowing, the user of the work cannot do. The main result of using the balloon is the movement created by the balloon blowing and the air escaping from it. It is therefore an object that does not take place completely without a user ”.

A visitor to Weseler's studio in Düsseldorf reported in the Westdeutsche Zeitung in early 2008: “The milieu still looks a bit creepy today. A shaggy fur hangs on the wall, padded with greenish foam, perforated with a welding torch. The fur result expels air in a nasty way like an asthma sufferer and pushes the foam through the burned hole in the fur. An exposed heart seems to be beating there. Around 40 years ago it was a shock. Breathing fur looks like a parasite on a tree trunk, rather cruel in a child's bed, a little bit funny on the grass mat. "

Inge Prokot (1933-2012)

Inge Prokot (* 1933 in Cologne; † April 12, 2012) was a Cologne-based graphic artist, sculptor and object artist. She has been working as a freelance artist since 1955. She took her ideas and materials from nature (skins, bones), but also combined them with artificially created products (roofing felt and other materials). Fur often played an important role in this. Particularly noticeable and highlighted in her work are her taller-than-man-sized elephants made of white sheepskin. As she wrote, she was fond of elephants.

A publication on the occasion of an exhibition in 1978 in the art collection of the Museum Bochum shows the following, undated works with fur:

  • Elephants
    • Elephant group (soft sculptures) , thirteen beings made of white lambskin, identified as elephants mainly by their extra-long trunks. The inside of the body consists of massive tree trunks, the eyes and trunk ends of metal found pieces. The voices of elephants recorded in Cologne Zoo accompanied the installation underlaid with white lambskins on display in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn . In the midst of the 130 centimeters to around three and a half meter high animal sculptures, Ilse Prokot is shown in a photo.
    • Single elephant in different positions , parts of a photo sequence. It shows an elephant standing on a white base. The body is in turn covered with pure white lambskin. Like all of their elephants, it has no extremities or a tail. It consists only of the trunk-like trunk, which is columnar through the tree trunk, the head recognizable by the metal eyes and a long trunk with a metal part, here with two pipe attachments on a piece of sheet metal representing the trunk end. On four shots, only the posture of the flexible, extra-long trunk changes, up to a knot.
    • A white elephant with lambskin skin has clock dials as eyes and an eternal part as the end of its trunk . He is 130 centimeters high, the trunk is four and a half meters long.
    • A two-part and three-part trunk image composed only of white lambskin trunks with metal finds in the trunk ends that are mounted on upholstered in white lambskin wood panels. The two-part picture with a back covered by fourteen lambskins left in the original shape at the edges is about 125 × 240 centimeters in size, the trunk with filler is about two meters long. Each part of the three-part work stands on a base plate of about 1 × 1 meter.
  • Steles
    • Lambskin and goatskin steles , two groups, white and brown, with a total of seven columns of solid tree trunks covered with spotted fur. The steles are about 120 centimeters high and about 22 centimeters in diameter.
    • A group of fur steles , about 27 tree trunks, each covered with goat skins, calf skins and rabbit skins .
    • From a series of black and white lambskin steles , five steles covered with black and white lambskin, color changes twice at half height, three times white in the upper third.
    • Leather steles I, II, II , coated in a patchwork-like manner with brown leather parts, apparently partly made of used leather clothing. The leather pieces are connected by prominent edge nailing. At least one of the three steles has some fur. The sheathing of the tree trunks is partially interrupted by branches.
    • A feather stele , like all other stelae made from a massive, 130 centimeter high tree trunk, has a deeply falling, hood-like attachment made of hemp strands, feathers, pheasant skins , leopard cat tails and other fur, jawbones and metal parts.
    • A cable stele , a 110 centimeter high tree trunk, covered with white lambskin, with a forty centimeter long, head-like attachment made of white plastic, bundled and welded cable ends.
    • The object stele with car tires from the row of horned steles also consists of a tree trunk wrapped in white lamb, with a protruding nose or head part and a horn made from half a car tire. The trunk of the small roaring deer stele is covered with deer fur, the head and antlers are made from a gasoline tank and a wooden rake. The two and a half meter high Big Roaring Deer is exceptionally four-legged. The stocky legs carry a zinc barrel as a body, which is covered by a brown fur on top. The neck is made of stove pipes and the head is a deer skull with antlers. Inside the body is a tape recorder with the voice of a roaring deer. The wheels Tele like with its nose portion to the small tube stag , on the breast part is a license plate with a Duisburg car number, are located on the upper part two bicycle wheels, connected opposite to an axle, the tires are like the rest of the stele coated with white lambskin .
    • The trunk of the sucker stele , which has many finds, is not fur-related. The eyes are made of wheel-like pieces of wood, including castanets as tears. The breasts are rubber drains, lingerie panties are attached at the appropriate height, and a monocle hangs directly above them. Raccoon pelts with the tails attached were used for the scalp hair.
  • Others
    • Shoe assemblages is the title of a series of six objects, all of which have a white fur underlay, made of lamb, calf or rabbit. They carry the descriptive name Silver jawbone shoe profile , silver shoe face , horned slipper face , black ice profile , Dynamo shoe profile and Boxhandschuhgesicht .
    • The large fur picture , white “calf skin” (?) Mounted on a wooden panel with many folds , measures 80 × 110 centimeters. There are driftwood finds on it.
    • The face-shaped fur assemblage consists of a wooden panel, also 80 × 110 centimeters, with white and black rabbit skins on which pieces of black fur, pieces of driftwood and animal jawbones are mounted.
    • Nine square or rectangular "small objects" are called "cat head object", "cockatoo feather face", "bottle neck face", "turtle gold shoe face", "vampire", "black green-eyed cat face", "bone nose face", "scales nose face" and "odometer head". All of them have a different amount of fur. This also applies to 18 other illustrated, mostly similar objects.
    • The last photo of the work shows the object box “Pelvis Bone Face”. The nose and eyes are formed by large-pored alluvial stones, the mouth is a pelvic bone, the rest of the face is made up of alluvial branches and strips of fur.

Cora Fisch (* 1952)

From "The Quadrature of Fur", Cora Fisch (2018)

In an exhibition invitation from Cora Fisch in 2003, the term “fur art” appears for the first time in a heading for the work with Fellwerk, although the artist does not like to see her work reduced to this term. Cora Fisch was probably also the first artist who consciously used old furs that were discarded by their owners as a material for art - apart from the rather accidental Beuys lynx coat.

In 1995 Cora Fisch began to deal with the material fur and the discarded fur coat as an "artistic challenge and means of expression". She created a “fictional ritual dwelling made of Persian coats from Berlin's rubble women ”, which she called “Persians shaved”. She wrote: “Again and again I shaved stinky, old Persian coats, removed their lining and everything 'human' and then found a material mystery in the bare fur, which exposes the archaic source and expands it for transformation: animal form - human Form - Abstract Show ”.

As early as the autumn of 1999, she went into public space with three fur billboards, which she described as “heat reserves in the process of changing values ”, in Berlin's Invalidenstrasse , near the Lehrter train station. At times she sat nearby and watched as she cut the old furs. She offered: "Cora Fisch will also exchange your fur coat for an art object of your desire."

In the summer of 2012, the Kunsthalle Wodrow in Mölln (Mecklenburg) showed its installation “Fell im Feld”, a gate made of six iron girders in the manner of an obstacle course, covered with furs of different types of fur, in the midst of blooming dandelions. Immediately afterwards she took part in a collective exhibition in the Reservoir VII water storage facility in Berlin, Prenzlauer Berg. The theme “Abundance” was given to match the exhibition space. Cora Fisch called her contribution with lush furs “Pelzstromland. Feel what is "; In the socialist daily newspaper Neues Deutschland interpreted as "furs as a symbol of luxury".

By the way, Cora Fisch repeatedly refers to the transience of fur. She reported that in 2010 she brought about 60 completely ailing, mottled and abandoned fur coats to the 17th International Sculptor Workshop at the Katzow Sculpture Park in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where she separated them and "freed them of everything 'human', i.e. food, buttons, bags". “Then I covered a 460 cm high wooden skeleton with the fur, padded it and secured it with wire mesh. After the birds had plucked plenty of fur from the sculpture, it was dismantled, laid on the ground, exposed to the seasons and fire, it developed new life ”.

With the “PelzKunstAktion” “ResonanzFELLd” in 2015 in the city of Demmin , she remembered the wave of suicides among the citizens of Demmin , which was probably unique in its scope, after the invasion of the Red Army on May 1st, 1945. On a 17-meter-long, 40-square-meter floor sculpture About 5000 tulip bulbs, each with a piece of fur, were buried as “organic fertilizer for the tulip bulbs”: “In spring 2015, 70 years after the horrors of the war, a blooming wave of flowers led to the Peene as a 'ResonanzFELLd', to a conscious, in the sense of a Values ​​change reflected in memory ”.

In the exhibition “The Quadrature of Fur” in Berlin in 2018, not only the different types of fur are used as pictorial means, but also their often very surprisingly structured backs with their many seams, shapes and different colors of the leather of the individual pieces of fur .

Thomas Grünfeld (* 1956)

Misfit Giraffe
External web link

Alongside Deborah Sengl , Thomas Grünfeld represents a number of artists who have included groomed fur animals in their work. With sculptures of mixed animal creatures from the series "misfits" started in the late 80s, he gained special international attention. From the skins of various animal species he created surprising, curious preparations of what appeared to be new beings. His group of works “misfits” (1989–2013) was mentioned in 2013 as “not yet completed”.

In England, where his works are particularly popular, Grünfeld related how he came up with the idea of ​​working with animal skins: “I saw a stuffed sparrow on a cricket ball at the MCC Gentleman's Club in London. The board said something like: This sparrow was killed by a cricket ball during a game that day. I made a piece with three sparrows on three cricket balls in a display case. Since that time (1988) I thought it could work as a nice metaphor for the English mentality. ”On the occasion of an exhibition in his hometown Leverkusen in 2013, Grünfeld reported how the series“ Misfits ”came about:“ A long time ago I saw a stuffed muskrat in the window of a Cologne shop, ramming an equally stuffed cock - and immediately thought to myself: That's a great idea! I have to do something like that! However, I first had to wait and develop a concept. Because: Just pretending to be Wolpertinger was too profane for me. I wanted a contemporary anchor. And when the topic of genetic manipulation came up at the end of the 80s , I finally had it. ”However, he didn't want his works to be understood as a criticism of genetic manipulation. When asked which of the combinations he thought disturbed people the most, he said, “The ones in which I combine pets - because they are close to people. With them I am still very sharply on the same level of allegory , of allusion. I can't approach people themselves. That would be too hard. So I approach those who are closest to him: his pets ”. At a first exhibition in 1990 in a London gallery, the Misfits provoked violent protests from animal rights activists and others who accused him of glorifying genetic manipulation so that the gallery received police protection.

Grünfeld first acquired the Hahn / Ratten tableau and exhibited it, without changing anything, as a ready-made in an art context. In 1989 he began to put together animal hybrids in the form of a collage, such as: rats and rabbits (1990), a foal dog (1996), flamingo dog (1998), young bull and ostrich, giraffe-ostrich-dog (2000), swan Nutria donkey (2000), deer giraffe (2006), a lamb with the body of a bulldog, a squirrel mermaid with a fish tail, fox and cat, squirrel and parrot or budgie and chick. He had up to six different animal species, seemingly seamlessly, combined into a single specimen.

With the technical performance of the work commissioned Grunfeld the Dutch animal taxidermy Bouten & Zoon who practice their craft in the fourth generation. The fur skins and bird skins come from orders received by boutons from zoos, other institutes and private individuals, of which they always keep around 500 refrigerated items in stock. In terms of the technical implementation, Grünfeld found out that feather skins placed over the fur produced a more invisible and therefore more believable connection in an object than the other way around (bird's head on furry animal's trunk). The interior is made of clay, wood, wool and yarn. In 2015 , Leontine Coelewij , curator of the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art in Amsterdam , stated in retrospect that with the works of Thomas Grünfeld, taxidermy as a craft and in art had flourished again. The artists “want to raise important questions about how we relate to nature - and how we deal with and use nature”.

When asked about the beauty of his animals, Thomas Grünfeld stated in 2008: “Art is always about beauty. I design them this way on purpose, some are 'beautiful' (tasteful), some are intentionally 'ugly'. What I am trying to achieve is to give every sculpture dignity and (as an overall impression) melancholy. You should rest in yourself ”.

Martin Margiela (* 1957)

Martin Margiela is a Belgian fashion designer , his works are actually not part of the (pure) fur art. However, through numerous exhibitions, for example in museums, Margiela is firmly established in the art world. The designer, who himself did not appear in public, studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and gained international fame through his intellectual and avant-garde fashion creations. At the end of 2009, Margiela withdrew into private life.

In the technique, called " deconstruction ", a term borrowed from philosophy , Margiela had clothes dismantled again and made their insides and their constructional character visible. In the fur sector, his simple, archaic "original stole" is of particular importance, which was created during the time when he was working for Hermes with completely contrasting, elegant-conservative collections (1997-2004), a simple, roughly cut, unlined one Oval, the upper part of which can also be worn as a hood. In 2018 it was shown at the Musée Galliera in Paris , probably made of fox skin .

Nina Stähli (* 1961)

From "Glory Land", Nina Stähli (2015)

Nina Stähli , a Swiss artist living in Berlin and Lucerne, used, like Cora Fisch before her , cut and worn furs in 2015. A year later, Simon Fujiwara also exhibited works made from old separate fur coats. With Nina Stähli, however, the fur was only an accessory to other work, without having to significantly rework it after cutting it, sometimes down to the fur parts.

Before that, in 2012, she showed the “Narcissus”, a body with a pig's head. On the back and in the manner of a collar is a cape made of mink fur parts.

In the various installations “Glory Land Sculpture”, Stähli draped almost or completely monochrome, doll-like torsos with a smooth surface on, around and in front of severed natural brown mink clothing. Some of the furs are still clearly recognizable as former sleeves or collars. Large portion shown with the inside facing upwards are photos on the tightly packed lying Auslassnähte seen in other parts of the composing seams of Nerzkopfstücken, the leather coloring by the skinner and the tracks of the detached Bändelbands (2015). In “Gridlock Exhibition” she arranged pieces of mink fur, mink tails, gray fox fur and blue fox fur apparently from a hat, sometimes together with the torsos, in her showroom (2015). In the performance and exhibition "Monkey Business" the protagonists wore monkey heads with synthetic hair wigs. Black-colored fur parts, probably made of blue fox fur, were integrated into the exhibition (2015).

Kate Clark (born 1972)

The American Kate Clark from Brooklyn, New York works in the manner of classic taxidermists. She had her first solo exhibition in 2008 at the Claire Oliver Gallery in New York . Her zebra, entitled “She gets what she wants” (2013) has a fur head, in contrast to the work by Deborah Sengl with the lion-like head, the face has human, feminine features. This type of alienation, with heads remodeled from clay and sometimes additionally shaved, applies to various animal species.

Kate Clark deliberately uses skins that are slightly damaged or actually too dry in the leather. These materials are less valued by traditional taxidermists, especially when the head parts are in poor condition. Clark, on the other hand, deliberately makes the repair and reshaping seams visible. She does not take part in the hunt herself and asks that animals not be hunted especially for her works of art.

Deborah Sengl (* 1974)

"The lioness - as a predator - reveals the coveted prey", Deborah Sengl (2004)

The Viennese Deborah Sengl works, like Thomas Grünfeld , with a taxidermist. Most of these, also humorous works are strongly reminiscent of the Victorian figure tableaus by the Englishman Walter Potter (1835–1918) with humanized animal preparations, whereby Sengl mostly creates a critical and often topical reference through titles such as “The Last Days of Mankind”. While Grünfeld joins skins from different animal species, Sengl, who started studying biology, is primarily concerned with the connection between humans and animals. However, the zebra and lioness can also be found united in the preparation "The lioness - as a predator - the coveted prey" (2004).

In the installation “The Last Days of Mankind” (2013-2014) with 174 prepared white and two black rats, for example, there was a group of four animals, two of which have a white cap. Humanly they sit together on white chairs around a white table playing cards. Other parts of this installation in the manner of Aesopian animal fables , 41 in total, are described, for example, as

"I. Act / 1st scene at the Sirk corner. 1 newspaper crier, 4 passers-by "(2013),
"I. Act / 2nd scene: Room of the chief of staff. 1 chief of staff, 1 major, 1 photographer "(2013),
"II. Act / 15th scene: The Cheruscan association meeting in Krems. 1 representative of the young team, 1 representative of the German postal workers, 1 couple "(2014),
"V. Act / 10th scene: at the desk, 1 Nörgler “(2014), as a black rat.
They range from street and magistrate scenes to incidents in the hospital to the atrocities in the theaters of war.

Deborah Sengl conceived this work based on Karl Kraus' stage version of “ The Last Days of Mankind ” on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War , in order to artistically portray the inhumanity and absurdity of the war. "We both observe from the outside and document what we see," says Sengl of her relatives to Karl Kraus. “Actually, I always only present what I experience, what I see in our time, in our society. I'm not inventing anything. Karl Kraus did the same, 'The last days' are mainly a collection of quotations and spoken words. "

Furrier art

  • Furrier work

  • Tapestry for hunting or sports room (Bode, Dresden, before 1903)

  • Cape "Butterfly" ( Schenkenbach , Düsseldorf, before 2018)

As is probably everywhere in art, when designing with fur, it is difficult or actually not possible to draw a clear line between art, handicrafts and kitsch. Purposeless, there are only decorative decorations in folk art in the fur clothing of all Nordic peoples. As a rule, the otherwise sloping fur parts such as paws, tails or head pieces were used, but also the fur of smaller animals. The women of the Siberian tribes embroidered ornate ornaments made of horse hair or the hair of the neck of reindeer into the furs.

While Ursula Schultze-Bluhm, for example, never created a pure fur object - like most of her colleagues who also work with fur - the art of furriers' fur usually consists exclusively of fur, apart from the necessary ingredients and possible feeding.

In the 1850s, European furriers began to make fur sculptures known as fur mosaics , which were only intended as wall decorations, possibly also as rugs. This experienced its heyday between 1870 and 1890. The beginnings of artistic fur mosaics were in Vienna. Here they were particularly well cared for and achieved world renown as a Viennese specialty. The work itself was decried as ungrateful in the industry, the income, especially for exclusive individual pieces that often required months of work, probably almost never justified the effort, the artistic endeavors of some particularly talented furriers were in the foreground. In 1954, in a commemorative publication of the Leipzig furriers, it was noted in connection with fur fashion and possibly only later kitsch that was perceived as tasteless: “So-called fur mosaics, pictures made from pieces of fur, can also be kitsch, precisely because they violate the fairness of materials when they show pictorial and figurative designs ”. Similar, much less laborious work for rugs or wall hangings is still made in the fur-processing countries, especially in Asia, or as individual work.

With the refinement of the furrier's craft, their masters saw themselves increasingly connected to art. In 1914, a German furrier proudly wrote in the specialist book he wrote, “Die Kürschnerkunst”: “In conjunction with the achievements of chemistry and technology, it was precisely the furrier of the 20th century that made it possible for the furrier of the 20th century to use those supplied by nature, not by himself or to imitate other suppliers, even raw products that cannot be replaced by anything, to create those delicious structures made of fine fabrics and valuable incense, in front of which laypeople and connoisseurs stand in admiration without envying those who call the work of art their own. And isn't it another incontestable proof of an art as such when it creates pure joy in the beautiful, in the harmonious, wherever it speaks to the educated person in its ripe fruit? "

Web links

Commons : Fur Art  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

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