Beyond the big bad wolves of medieval folk tales, animals are mostly appropriated these days for innocent children’s entertainment. From Looney Tunes‘s Bugs Bunny to Ratatouille‘s Remy, fuzzy woodland creatures are now regularly stripped of their primal natures in the name of cuddly, moral-leveraging amusement. But David Sedaris’s Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary — essentially an R-rated answer to Aesop’s Fables — reaffirms that pop culture has had an equally engaged, if somewhat less overt, relationship with animal characters intended for mature audiences. From books to comics, movies to street art, and puppets to paintings, the following artists have created a spectrum of grown-up animal iconography that’s best kept away from young eyes.
If you’re a reader, you know the dilemma. You may love to give and get books, but you’ve got at least a few friends or family members who just aren’t into what you’ve hand-picked and lovingly gift-wrapped for them. Never fear! We present our handy list of eye-candy books for even the toughest crowd.
Walton Ford’s paintings of wild animals combine the austere mastery of New England-style naturalism with a dark sexuality and satirical humor.
Ford’s latest project is Pancha Tantra, a signed and numbered edition from Taschen; its title is a reference to the Sanskrit tradition of animal fables as sociopolitical commentary. The artist’s exotic birds of prey, equine species, and their surreal orgies, tea parties, and surroundings act as metaphorical indictments of the insatiability and violence of his own species’ appetites. Read More »
