Noa Kaplan   next        Winter 2011 index     156A        
Assignment 2  Getty

Stab Beetle is a response to Albrecht Durer’s watercolor, Stag Beetle, from 1505. In Stab Beetle, a burin—a traditional engraving tool—impales an insect and pins it to a sheet of paper bearing Durer’s monogram. This gesture reveals a conflict between the artist’s desire to fix a subject in time through the act of representation and, in the case of Durer’s animal studies, the inevitable extermination of the subject in order to render a meticulous likeness.