Gland Prix

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Differences of Opinion

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Walton Ford:

Now, Dürer somehow still got a sketch from Lisbon, with a written description and was able to make this sort of twisted rhinoceros that’s still accurate, in a way. It’s quite beautifully imagined – there are particulars that are real to a rhino, but it also looks kind of like a crustacean or a crab, which is really apt since this thing drowned.

So the moment of transformation, where this animal goes from an actual animal to being transformed into an icon that for 300 years people drew and believed to be a rhino, is the moment I painted. So here he’s dying, but he’ll be reborn from the ocean as this armored crustacean, and really live for another thousand years as this transmogrified creature.

So that was an art historical moment that had never been painted. It also gave me an opportunity to…I painted a rhino the way rhinos actually look. So this is a portrait of what Dürer never saw, though this is the moment at which he’s turning into Dürer’s rhino. So it’s a comment on the way we impose our culture on the natural world, but without it being dogmatic in message.”

From an interview, here.

Thanks to cfbwe for liking my recent post and prompting me thusly to check out his own site.

Which led me to many a pleasant thing, including the above.

Which I am thankful for now knowing about.

Walton Ford’s Loss of the Lisbon Rhinoceros