a tag: HUNT

The tag of the day is hunt, the algorithm in my head and fingers put up the following search results summed up in cultural items such as a film (sorry, several films), a print, a sculpture, a painting, a comic, a photograph and an object.

The easiest way to be found in the world wide web is to title the object with the most relevant word that describes it. When "The deer hunter" first came out in 1978, many hunting-lovers (of which there are a lot in the US) probably ran to the cinemas and ended up learning much more about supposed torture techniques used by the Vietcong on american soldiers. Nevertheless, its breathtaking landscapes of the North Cascades National Park (in the State of Washington) offer a visual realm of beauty as opposed to most of the scenes in the movie.

Hunting has been practiced not only by “nature loving” men, but also since we were so young as to be called Neanderthals. So here’s a tag with which you are likely to find a lot of copyright-free material.

"Origenes del hombre", El hombre de Neanderthal 1. 

Ed. Folio SA, Barcelona.

Let’s take a look...

Hispana is the roof under which many memory institutions in Spain have gather to provide tags and provenance of digitized cultural objects to be found (if you are lucky) in the europeana portal. This picture shows a man using 'boleadoras', a set of two or three balls tied with rope, a gadget found in Pre-Columbian excavations and used, or better yet still being used, by Patagoinan Gauchos. The print is a reconstruction made by George Constable under consultation of archaeologists from Columbia University and the London Institute of Archeology (that is all I will be writing about provenance). 

The historical evolution of things, made me stop at two very important chapters of almost anything that means culture: the Greeks and the Romans. Once called Diana but first Artemis, the ancient savants related this goddess not only to the hunt but also to wild animals, childbirth and virgin girls, mmm. The following images were among the top-five results after entering the word "hunt" in the collections' online databases from Tate and Museo Thyssen respectively (hunting goes gender). Exploring museums from home is something you can do increasingly in more museums by typing in google "explore the collection online" and then the name of the museum you are interested in.

Sir Hamo Thornycroft Sketch for 'Artemis' 1880 (Tate Britain, London)

Jean-Marc Nattier, Madame Bouret as Diana 1745 (Museo Thyssen, Madrid)

To relate virgin girls with hunting makes me think of the comics I read when I was little. One of my favorite comics back when, 'Yakari', tells the story of a child-Sioux whose friends are, in fact, wild animals. I suppose the Greeks and Romans did use some logical arguments when coming up with a mythological context for the genuine Lady Di. Coincidentally, Yakari had a friend called Little-Big-Shot who dreamt of being a great hunter.

What I used to dream about, was to be caught up in the world of cartoon-phantasy that Mary Poppins introduces to those two ugly kids from London. There, one of the most famous hunting scene of film history takes place, quite an unusual one if you pay close attention.

Turning to other sources of collections online, I stumbled upon the George Eastman House which one can also explore from home. This museum is committed to collect, preserve and promote the legacy of great photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen. There, I found a photo of Spanish King Alfonso XIII (who on 1931 took the road to exile voluntarily during the Second Republic in Spain). Apparently, as the current King of Spain does, he also fancied hunting. In the picture he is chatting with some huntsmen in the countryside before getting to it. Maybe 'it' ended up in a suffocating episode such as Carlos Saura's 1965 film "La caza" depicts.

Espagne Le roi a la chasse ca. 1908

Finally after watching so many hunting scenes, hunters and huntresses, I could not but finish this post with one element repeating in most of these visuals: the weaponry. Weapons are objects that are typically found in cultural history museums. You can find those (usually) old-fashioned museums in any city and represent the cultural highlight of almost any small town. They are not as popular as art museums but perform the important task of preserving and remembering our existence in past times and our ways of life in dark ages, to which the term 'hunt' one day will hopefully belong, together with weapons like the one underneath. I found this rifle with ivory inlays in the online collection of the Landesmuseum Württengerg in Stuttgart. This online collection is not hosted by a sophisticated museum website, but by a resource (Museum Digital) used by many cultural history museums in Germany that allows them to share information about unique objects.

Wheellock rifle (Munich, 1559)
Provenance/Copyright: Landesmuseum Württemberg, Stuttgart; Frankenstein/ Zwietasch