In the Hall of Bones

As a place to visit in Paris, the Natural History Museum beats them all.


The ground floor of the Natural History Museum, Paris.

As soon as you walk in you can do nothing but stare. Staring right back at you is a chorus of skeletons, the bare bones of the animal kingdom. Whoever set up this display had a keen scene of the theatrical. Most of the skeletons are facing the same direction, at you, and there isn’t a single preserved skin or display panel to break the march of boniness. The iron ribs in the roof have been painted suitable colours to compliment the skeletons. Colour-wise, the whole huge room and all its contents fall into a small range of creams and browns. There are giraffes, walruses, horses and whales. There are deer, rhino, snakes and turtles. Many have been there for over a hundred years and it seems, as you walk in, that they have been waiting for you.


Skull of a two-headed calf, Veau Iniodyme.

At the back of the room are some strange cases. They are the kind of freak show that museums would not put on display nowadays but have been allowed to remain in this old museum. There are skeletons of human babies, set up in creepy standing positions. There is a cyclops pig preserved in a jar and the skull of a two-headed calf.


A Green Turtle, Tortue Verte.

Many natural history museums have stuffed animals on display. Taxidermy has been used to preserve the impression of life in the corpse. In those museums we are able to examine the skin of the creature, look into its artificial eye. Perhaps a stuffed animal is better at making us understand how the creature looked in the wild but, for me, something vital has been lost in the process. It might be dignity. In this museum in Paris we see the bleached bones, the raw structure of life, and our imaginations flesh them out. Strange but true; these skeletons suggest the grandeur of life much more a room of stuffed skins would.

What Fright Looks Like

The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch lived from 1864 to 1944. Walking in Oslo one evening as the sun was setting he was struck by a vision. He wrote, "looking out across flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword over the deep blue fjord and city [ … ] I felt a great, infinite scream pass through nature."


The Scream, 1893, oil on cardboard, 36 x 29 inches, Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo.

The Scream was Munch's record of his experience that evening. Now the painting has become an icon of anxiety. This is largely down to the powerful simplicity of the face. The face is framed by the palms pressed to its hallow cheeks and contains almost nothing but mouth and eyes, wide-open and aghast. Here is a primary image of fear. It was a primary image of fear before Munch even painted it.

The Scream is world famous image and has gone on to be reproduced, copied, messed-with and recast in countless ways. The pop artist Andy Warhol had a go, as did The Simpsons. The murderous lunatic in the Wes Craven’s Scream movies wears a mask based on the face in the painting. The same mask is always a big seller at this time of year, Halloween. So, independently of the original painting, The Scream lives.

The painting also had a pre-life. Munch heard an “infinite scream pass through nature” but how did he find a face for it? He went to the museum. During his time in Paris an Inca mummy went on display there, Munch went to see it. The body had come from Peru. It had been bound and buried in a jar.


The mummy is still in Paris, in the Musée de l'Homme.

It can be imagined that, when Munch looked upon the mummy, he had found what fright might look like. He painted its portrait and he sent it out into the world. It is still with us today.

The Girl With Many Eyes

Tim Burton is the director of Ed Wood, Planet of the Apes and the 1989 version of Batman. My favourite of his movies is probably Edward Scissorhands. It’s the standard 'boy meets girl' kind of story, but instead of hands this boy has scissors on the end of each arm. These unusual appendages come between him and his beloved.

Edward Scissorhands is typical of Burton’s work, he is interested in outcasts, oddballs and teenage freaks. Apart from making movies he has also written and illustrated a book of poems featuring a wide range of strange youths, all struggling to belong. It is called The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories and it is a very funny collection of rhythms. Here’s an example:

The Girl With Many Eyes

One day in the park
I had quite a surprise
I met a girl
who had many eyes.

She was really quite pretty
(and also quite shocking!)
and I noticed she had a mouth,
so we ended up talking.

We talked about flowers,
her poetry classes
and the problems she’d have
if she ever wore glasses.

It’s great to know a girl
who has so many eyes,
but you really get wet
when she breaks down and cries.

The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories is published by Faber and Faber.

You can watch the trailer for Edward Scissorhands here.