ABSTRACT
Jimmie Durham enhanced the skull of each creature with various materials such as glass, leather, and paint, and produced a body for each animal from items such as machine parts, furniture elements, and building components. Durham’s sculptures stood at the height of the animals they embodied, and filled an entire, expansive gallery. Durham’s 2017 project with the skulls of Europe’s largest animals faces death and life in another specific context: Europe’s both impassioned and dispassionate relationships with animals, including humans. Durham calls his skull assemblages “animal spirits,” thereby situating their presence at the place where life and death meet, the visible and invisible merge, and the earthly and otherworldly collide. Animal skulls have a long history in human creation. The oldest visually enhanced skull from North America to date is the “Cooper Skull,” a crushed cranium of a now-extinct bison, painted with a red zigzag pattern over 10,500 years ago.
