Returning to the trail…

During 2007 the focus of my stag research shifted to the Jelenometrija research exhibition realised in October 2007 with the Slovene artistic collective DDR:

www.ddr.si
http://pj07.wikidot.com/

I will place some of this archive material here shortly. There will also be announcements of further Stag-related research and actions. In the meantime, all comments and proposals for stag-related collaboration are welcome.

Contemporary Stag art

This is a preliminary list of artists in whose work the Stag plays a part. The roles it performs are ironic, monumental, cryptic, erotic, mythological… In some cases the Stag inspires performance actions, in others it is used as a meta-reference to other symbolic uses of the Stag, in advertising for instance. Some artists make isolated Stag references here and there, while for others it is a central component of their aesthetic.

Marcus Coates

Gloria Friedmann

Tamar Hirschl

 Edward Janssen 

Anselm Kiefer

Pierre Klossowski

Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK)

Perejaume 

Geoff Rosenthal

Slaven Tolj 

Christmas “Stags”: False Friends?

Paperchase Christmas display, London 2006.

Preliminary work on this project began in mid-2004, although informal tracking of symbolic stags dates back much further. In each of the last two years it’s become obvious that red deer stags (rather than just reindeer) are increasingly pressed into service as a symbol of Christmas.

In the British context, native red deer are easier to relate to than reindeer and this may represent a modified return to Victorian era symbolism. Last year, the clothes chain Urban Outfitters’ Christmas displays featured woodcut style placards featuring traditional looking stags. This year the furniture store Heal’s has produced an interesting cross breed: what seems to be a British stag (rather than reindeer) except that it is completely white.

On the same stretch of Tottenham Court Road the largest store in the Paperchase stationery chain is decorated with totally Stag/antler centred window and store displays. This features a generic, stylised Stag head and antlers. So although reindeer remain the most frequent Christmas reference, generic and red deer stags are increasingly central to the representation of the festive season. For aficionados of stag symbolism this can be a rewarding time, even if you are strict and exclude reindeer from your observations. Send us your sightings.

The Found Stag

Tracks of the Stag © A. Monroe 2006.

The concept of the “found stag” (cerf trouve) is a way of marking chance encounters with symbolic stags and deriving aesthetic or theoretical significance from them. The key elements here are (initial) unexpectedness, randomness and inexplicability. There are numerous cases of symbolic stags appearing or being deployed in apparently unrelated contexts, such as this Japanese airline advert.  Stag-related imagery seems especially prevalent in advertising and there are many hyper-contemporary examples, often for seemingly unrelated products.  

Advertisers, designers, artists and others are all drawn to the symbol but are often unable to explain precisely why they have used it, and why it remains such an efficient generator of fascination. Found stags have always occurred in human culture and representation, and even in earlier times they have often strayed beyond their “natural” territories (rural and hunting contexts) and appeared as found stags in unexpected domains. Found stags can manifest as artistically deployed “interpreted natural objects”, brewery logos, CD covers, military insignia and in many other forms, some of which will be presented here as they are found.  

Sometimes the specific reasons behind its appearance have been lost with time, but in many cases there may not have been any stronger reason than the undiminished (and perhaps not fully explicable) power of the symbol itself. By gathering examples of the found stag, the project will attempt to identify the significance of each (type) of found stag and what it reveals about historical and contemporary cultural processes. It will also explore the conscious and unconscious motivations associated with its use, and begin to construct a history and analysis of this most intensively exploited symbol.  

First Scent

This is the new online home of this project designed to track and identify the “symbolic stag” in its many habitats. This is the hyper-present creature that appears on T-shirts, posters, pub signs, military aircraft and a vast range of other historical and cultural contexts. How, why, when and where it has, is, and will be used is the focus of the project, which will document, classify and interpret its tracks.