Last night, Damien Hirst's The Golden Calf sold for $18.6 MILLION dollars.
The financial world is unraveling and the US economy is in ruins, so maybe $18.6 million dollars for a calf submerged in formaldehyde is a sound investment.
Glass Menagerie
Yesterday, Karly wrote some rockin' posts on animal furniture for Elle Decor, and on animal plates for our DC. When faced with the daunting task of following in her fantastic footsteps, I realized the only thing left to blog about was... animals. Real ones. I'm not even talking about the ubiquitous deer heads seen on every single wall in the country, but I am talking about real... animals. Sort of. Before anyone goes all PETA on me, let me just say (as my thin and poorly executed defense) that I am from northeast Texas, y'all, and taxidermy is part of my cultural heritage. People, just be glad I didn't adopt other quirks indigenous to that region, like flashing my Neocon credentials, or drinking moonshine. Which is actually kind of good. Not the neocon part. Besides, you know you want this:
Dutch design duo Idiots (their term, not mine) are the latest incarnation in a long line of taxidermy artists, and when I say "artists" I do not mean the nefarious creators of jackelopes and other such curiosities designed to finagle dollars from your pocket at the local fairground.
I mean, for example, the incomparable Annette Messager, hero to all artists of the collector persuasion, myself included:
Did I mention that I'm weird? Messager's insanity laden early 90's exhibition of taxidermy wearing stuffed animal heads is like the goth girl version of Mike Kelley's stuffed animals placed in compromising situations. (He did the cover for Sonic Youth's Dirty if you're old enough to remember it.)
More recently, Kelly McCallum has been tearing up the London scene with her intricate juxtapositions of brilliant metalwork and memento mori:
Who knew birds had clockwork hearts?
Back to the Idiots, whose conviction I find utterly convincing:
I have this empty spot in the corner that I just know this would fill brilliantly. The lime green embroidered "skirt" and black ruffled petticoats are so amazing that it becomes hard to look at this level of craft and feel grossed out.
Some more flights of fancy:
And one more charmingly feathered friend:
There's such an enormous amount of respect that goes into each creation that I feel like these little sculptures have been loved into life. Every detail, from the animals themselves to the beautifully blown glass, is perfect.
And then there's this:
What's the matter? Never seen a crystal encrusted decapitated deer before? Neither have I, friends, neither have I.
Wait, this is ostensibly an interior design blog, right? Well, then, design a room around this:
What would you do with this 17 foot long shark Damien Hirst eloquently titled, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living? I'm afraid it's unavailable for anything but fantasy since Charles Saatchi already owns it, but we could ask, What Would Saatchi Do? WWSD? If your heart aches for a formaldehyde encased shark of your very own, you could always attend today's auction at Sotheby's of what may be the entirety of Hirst's personal collection, and it's sure to include some creepy crawlies. Don't forget to bring your $500 million dollars with you.
Yum! My soup tastes like animals.
Recently I was asked by Elle Decoration South Africa to write a guest post on their blog. After doing a little happy dance, I proposed a post on my current favorite subject: animal furniture. You know I love it and I'm going to make you love it too. Well, my post is up today!!!! I urge you all to scoot over to Elle and read it, post haste. Once you are done, you can make the walk of shame back to our old stomping grounds (that's right here) to read my corresponding, celebratory ANIMAL DISHES post. Hooray, it's animal week couple of days here at Design Crisis and we're going to party, animal style! I'm going to get this party started right/quickly with my vary favorite animal dish of all:
KA-POW! There it is! The most perfect dish ever created in the history of time. If I owned this dish I would never again oversleep, for I would jump out of bed at the crack of dawn ready to slurp up my cereal and say hello to my new friend. What's that? You all want to get up early, too? Goody, we can all have breakfast together, pick your bowl:
jeeze-o-flick this is a tough decision I am forcing you to make. Look at the GOLD on that snail, it's bowl perfection! Thank you Nymphenburg for commissioning uber artist Hella Jongerius to create my dream dishes. Not thank you for charging $3,529 per dish.
If you are liking the animal-in-my-bowl look but are hoping to have a little more room for something like, oh, i don't know, food, perhaps you would prefer this:
Awwe, yes, a little baby lamb, right there to say hello to you when you slurp your spaghetti. Careful! Don't hit is wittle head with your spoon! A+ Monique Goossens, you have the top design.
Are you all pounding your forks on the table begging for more? You're the boss:
Ok, so these plates don't have an insane awesome figurine sitting right on top of them, but price-wise, they're actually attainable, PLUS, the fact that they look like 2 sets of plates fused together is totally freakin rad. I love the idea that 1. it looks like plate fusion but that 2. one half of the plate always matches the other plates. Gee wiz Jason Miller, that's some smart designing.
Here are the matching teapots. Because everyone needs a teapot:
I like that the shape of this pot is traditional, as is the image, yet, the placement of the bird makes them totally hip and interesting. Subtle changes make a big difference, I guess. I really wish I knew more about subtlety. But I don't, which is why I'm about to show you this:
What up, yo? Yeah, I'm just a taxidermied head teapot, no worries, it's all good. You want some tea? yeah, you can go ahead and pet my fur while you pour it. Yes, very soft, isn't it. ummm, yummy death tea. What's that? You wish you had a fur tea cup to go along with your new teapot? If you had 10 gazillion dollars then you could get the first animal dish ever made:
Méret Oppenheim's original animal dish: the fur lined tea cup
Enough with the history lesson! Moving on:
These hand painted dishes from Supermarket are just begging to have a song written about them. Something to the tune of Bananas in Pajamas. You write, I'll sing. Deal? Deal.
Next!
AHHHHH!!!!!! I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M JUST NOW POSTING THESE!!! Deep Breaths, Deep Breaths. You know how much I love horses!! Holy moly my head is spinning. Can someone please please for the love of god buy these for me already? They're from Bodo Sperlein's Re-Cyclos Series for Lladro, you can purchase them there
Since you all have to run and fill up your shopping cart on my behalf, I'll go ahead and wrap this puppy up. Here's our last dish of the day:
Hippity Hop, it's Michael Aram's kangaroo bowl. Gold + Animal + Dish = Karly's little private heaven.
So, to recap:
1. We love animals, specifically, inanimate one's that make our house pretty / special
2. We are going to read my SECOND post for the day over at Elle Decoration South Africa
3. We are very proud of Me for Both of my posts
4. Purchasing horse tea cups
5. Coming back tomorrow for Erin's continued animal celebration. what up animal party!