This is admittedly weird, and I’m not totally sure what I think about it, but it sent me on such an involved train of thought that I wanted to share it with you and get your thoughts.

Mathieu Miljavac, who formerly spent 10 years doing detailed embellishment for the couture fashion houses of Paris, now creates “conceptual taxidermy.” He learned the art of traditional taxidermy, but then took it another direction, where the animals are not posed as they traditionally would be (like the bird above right), animals not usually preserved by taxidermy (like a house mouse), or in some cases, a sort of new animal is created using only some of the parts of the original animal.

That sounds so morbid and creepy, but the results are rather amazing looking, or at least thought-provoking, like that feather fluff ball with one foot, above left. What do you think? Too twisted? Disrespectful of the dignity and beauty of the original animal? (Btw, the animals all died natural deaths.)

This also reminded me of the great article Vanity Fair ran in 2008 after the fire in the famous Deyrolle taxidermy institution in Paries. If you missed that article and/or don’t know about Deyrolle, read the article. Especially if you’re creeped out by taxidermy, it will shift the way you view it. (Deyrolle was also the set of one of the parties in Midnight in Paris!)

Then also it reminded me of these photos taken of Deyrolle after the fire, which chronicled a bizarre “second death” of the taxidermied animals.

Ok and finally, to lighten the mood a little, the bird at top right reminded me of the “night time… day time!” bird at the beginning of the video below. My littlest niece and I watched this vid about 10 times in a row, and if there’s any metric for measuring silly humor…

• Tweet