By Adrian Burton
Until several weeks ago, I had no idea there was such a thing as "wildlife art". There, I've said it; my lack of culture is revealed for all to see. And I am afraid it gets worse. I only discovered wildlife art because a television news bulletin reported that, on December 7, 2010, a hardcopy edition of John James Audubon's Birds of America sold at auction for £7,321,250 (US $11,542,683) at Sotheby's in London, thus becoming the world's most expensive printed book.
The buyer was London art dealer Michael Tollemache, so I supposed the book to be a work of art. But then, what should make Audubon's work art rather than (or as well as) expertly crafted illustration?
Collectors and curators examine one of John James Audubon's Birds of America folios prior to it fetching a whopping £7.3 million at auction in London in 2010
The stuffier parts of libraries contain many wonderfully illustrated books on the living world from the 18th and 19th centuries—but in the Natural History section, not the Art section. Was Audubon's work somehow different?
In search of an answer, I read Cynthia Freeland's But is it Art? and grappled with unfamiliar theories and definitions of art. Several seemed to place one within arm's length, but in the end each had some flaw that left the matter unsettled. It would seem that artists and philosophers have trouble defining art. So I tried something else....
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· Article is 926 words long (250 are displayed in this preview).
Author: Adrian Burton
Post Date:August 12th, 2011
'After a folio of John James Audubon's Birds of America sold for a record £7.3 million at auction in 2010, and became the highest price paid for a book, Adrian Burton set out to ask: Did the book sell because of its value to bibliophiles or because it was a work of art—not just art, but wildlife art? Another catalyst for Burton's essay, which first appeared in the journal, Frontiers In Ecology and the Environment (published by the Ecological Soceity of America), was an essay from Ron Kingswood Is Animal Painting Dead? that first appeared here in Wildlife Art Journal. Burton raises important questions and serves as an excellent complement to Robert Bateman's recent rebuttal to Kingswood titled The State of Wildlife Art.
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Research tags: adrian burton, the ecological society of america, wildlife art journal, john james audubon, birds of americawildlife art, wildlifeartjournal.com, cynthia freeland, But is it art?, ron kingswood, simon gudgeon,
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