58 Nebraskaland • December 2022
THE LAST STOP
Late one afternoon, the bison skull propped on a
chair in our dining room caught my eye. I liked how the
sunlight coming through the window cast the skull in
warm colors and created sharp shadows. I grabbed my
camera and snapped a few photos.
The skull is one of three bison skulls on display in
our house. It belonged to a bull bison purchased nearly
20 years ago from a southeastern Nebraska rancher for
butcher. I cleaned the skull and placed it on the chair.
Later, Grace, my wife, inserted a "cheap plastic vine" into
the killing bullet hole and draped it over the skull.
Later, while viewing the skull photographs, I was
reminded of Georgia O'Keefe's paintings of cow skulls
I had seen in art books. O'Keefe was an American
modernist artist who lived from 1887 to 1986. I pondered
why she, like myself, was so infatuated with skulls. I did
a little reading.
O'Keefe's interest in skulls began during a summer
visit to New Mexico in 1930, the year after a severe
drought littered the desert floor with bones. Fascinated
by the "stark elegance of the bones," she collected cow
and horse skulls and shipped them back to New York
to paint. One authority said her paintings "attempt to
capture the inner essence and therefore true 'reality' of
the thing … [and represent] the death and destruction
of the American landscape, or they can be viewed as
celebratory works that pay tribute to the animals that
first inhabited the Western landscape."
Whoa! That is such deep symbolism — not what I
saw when I photographed my bison skull. To be honest,
I rarely notice or understand symbolism in art, movies
or literature. For example, Grace recently told me the
vine twining from the skull's bullet hole symbolized "life
growing from death." I totally missed that — I thought
she used the vine just to hide the hole.
One possible explanation for my "symbolic
incompetence" is that I was born without or with a
very small "symbolic lobe," that little-known part of the
brain that recognizes and understands symbolism and
inspires artists such as O'Keefe. Or perhaps, unknown
to my conscious mind, deep in my subconscious I do
understand symbolism and my photographs are loaded
with it. Therefore, in reality, my bison skull photograph
represents the death and destruction of the great
American prairie and pays homage to its iconic creature,
the bison.
Hogwash. Who am I trying to fool? I took the photo
because, to my simple mind, it looked cool.
By Gerry Steinauer
SYMBOLIC DEFICIENCY