Art?!?!? Starving a dog to death is ART!!!???

[GrannieAnnie]

Sick.....sick.....sick.....

 

[Yusuf Evans]

Geez, as far as we know, the dog hasn't been mistreated.

All we've got is an underweight dog that was caught on the streets that has been put on display for 3 hours a day, with a "do not feed" sign. No big deal.

Does that somehow justify denying a dog food, for the sake of art?

 

[meebs]

That's pretty disgusting. Almost as disgusting is the fact that everyone attending the exhibition also allowed the dog to starve, which I suspect was the point he was trying to make.
It's still animal cruelty and the guy is unhinged.
Suffering for your art is one thing, making others suffer for your art is unacceptable. If the guy wanted to make a statement, he should have chained himself up and starved.

I totally agree.

This is pure sick.

Update: I read Bombila's post. Reminds me to look up on the facts before i post.

Thinking about it though, this shows me how we respond to this sort of information. Reminds me that im not unsympathetic to events, real or not. I don't know if this is real or not, but it still shows that many people have genuine positive moral attitudes* (wasn't sure how to phrase this) to such information.

*meaning we recognise how sick something is an we respond.

My apologies if this comes across as a dumb post. Im not sure about my phrasing. But the meaning is there.

 

[Bombila]

Thanks for reading the post, meebs. I see others have not.

I at least understand what you mean. But I wish people would investigate a bit before they get outraged.

In effect, the artist accomplished exactly what he intended, without harming any dog, but certainly getting on a lot of people's emotional wagons.

I just hope some idiot doesn't harm him without knowing the whole story.

And if anyone else is jumping to conclusions: please read my post #10.

 

[Beanieboy]

Thanks for reading the post, meebs. I see others have not.

I at least understand what you mean. But I wish people would investigate a bit before they get outraged.

In effect, the artist accomplished exactly what he intended, without harming any dog, but certainly getting on a lot of people's emotional wagons.

I just hope some idiot doesn't harm him without knowing the whole story.

And if anyone else is jumping to conclusions: please read my post #10.

The fact that no one has read post #10 to me shows how easily people are mislead.

My guess is that the artist was upset that there are so many dogs that starve to death in his city. To call attention to this, he found a dog that was starving, and put it in the gallery for 3 hours a day with a sign that read, Do Not Feed. People probably thought this was cruel, and unfortunately weren't able to make the connection to what was happening outside the gallery. The dog was probablyi then fed, walked, when the gallery was closed.

However, I think people are very quick to believe anything, especially when they can condemn someone.

I worked at the Walker Art Center during college, and had the opportunity to see Karen Finley, Ron Athey, and a number of controversial performing artists. The museum wouldn't allow torture for art's sake. (Even scarification is self inflicted, only cutting the skin, and done in other cultures, including US fraternities.)

I really doubt that if an artist said, "Hey, I'm going to do an instalation where I starve a dog to death as a statement of society" that the musuem is going to give a thumbs up. It's probably meant to create the illusion of a starving dog so that people are upset and think about it the next time they see a dog wandering around, or haven't gotten their dog spade or neutered.

I used to work with a woman that would forward emails of warning to us. One email was about a man who had a tape recorder of a baby. When the woman looks outside to find the baby, she is attacked. Then, I would have to send her a website that shows that it is only an urban legend, only to get another one the next week.

Use a bit of discernment.

I don't know which is worse: being completely guilable, or condemning someone before you even have all the facts.

 

[Beanieboy]

POST #10

Whoa, guys:

All may not be as it seems.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ayoung73/blog/2007/12/03/Guillermo-Habacuc-Vargas

Scroll down the page and you will find this statement from the gallery.

Gallery Codex
Managua, Nicaragua

Here is the rough English translation of their statement:
Can be found in original Spanish here: http://www.galeriacodice.com/index.php?id=30

EXPLANATION OF GALERIA CODICE EXPLANATION OF GALERIA CODICE
Managua, 19 of October

Gallery Codex, from its creation in 1991, has promoted the Central American and Nicaraguan visual arts.It has exposed masterful, consolidated and emergent artists. The contemporary languages of the universal art have had space welcoming samples of conceptual art constantly. With that spirit, the 16 of August of 2007 Exhibition no. 1 appeared, of the Costa Rican artist Guillermo Vargas, known like Habacuc.

One of its works went to present/display a famished dog that during the exhibition was moored of a corner of the gallery. Habacuc named to the dog "Natividad" in tribute to the Nicaraguan Natividad Canda that died devoured by two Rottweiler dogs to in San Jose, Costa Rica, the 10 of November of 2005.

The dog remained in Codex three days from the 15 of August. He was loose all along in the inner patio, except the 3 hours that the sample lasted and was fed regularly. Surprise, to the dawn of the 17 of August the dog escaped by the iron iron doors of the main entrance.

Gallery Codex reserves the right of guarding by the quality of the exposed works, respecting the creativity and without exerting no type of censorship. We respected the elementary principles of the life and the ethics, that does not imply the life of a living being, is human or animal.

She celebrates the one that people at international level have been annoying by the declarations of Habacuc, where maintained that its intention was to let die to the starvation dog, which is of his responsibility. When informing the truth into the facts, we hoped that those same people have protested when Natividad Canda was devoured by the Rottweilers.

Kindly,
Juanita Bermúdez
Director
Galería Códice
Managua, Nicaragua

And they added the following link an article in the La Prensa (It is the same as what was posted on the gallery's website):
http://www-usa.laprensa.com.ni/archivo/2007/octubre/24/noticias/cartas/


Now, you may still find it an outrageous art piece, and you will find that the artist himself refuses to say exactly what happened, for his own reasons, which given what I know of performance/installation artists does not mean he's guilty, but that he means to inspire controversy.

I also am aware of a number of other, mostly European artists over the past thirty years who have staged similarly outrageous and apparently cruel 'events' involving animals, and in every case I am familiar with, the cruel part of the work did not happen.

In every case, the animal was not actually harmed, was fed and cared for, while the artist made his/her statement as if the animal was really suffering/tortured/killed.

I personally think it is a stupid offshoot of performance art, but I'd really hate to see this guy get murdered over it.

 

[Beanieboy]

I totally agree.

This is pure sick.

Update: I read Bombila's post. Reminds me to look up on the facts before i post.

Thinking about it though, this shows me how we respond to this sort of information. Reminds me that im not unsympathetic to events, real or not. I don't know if this is real or not, but it still shows that many people have genuine positive moral attitudes* (wasn't sure how to phrase this) to such information.

*meaning we recognise how sick something is an we respond.

My apologies if this comes across as a dumb post. Im not sure about my phrasing. But the meaning is there.

Which is more sick, to represent a dog starving to death, or to have thousands of starving dogs in Costa Rica, and do nothing or ignore the problem? And where do you think these starving dogs come from?

 

[quatona]

Actually, Beanieboy, I find the question whether this happened or not completely irrelevant for the discussion whether this is (or would be) art. No difference for the considerations regarding the topic question.

 

[Bombila]

In fact, the artist did not intend the work to draw attention so much to starving dogs, as to the death of a man he knew from a dog attack - his point being people worldwide would get upset about the dog, but wouldn't care about the man. And he was right.

 

[Beanieboy]

Actually, Beanieboy, I find the question whether this happened or not completely irrelevant for the discussion whether this is (or would be) art. No difference for the considerations regarding the topic question.

That's a different topic.
From what I read, there was crack burning, marijuana burning, and music of the Sandanistas playing.

I think there was a lot said there, about caring only when we see it in a musuem, but not when we see it in real life, doing little about the drug problem (except arresting people and putting them in jail).

I ask my class what they think of a photograph of a crucifix that has a yellowy tint. They think it is ok. It's kind of blurry, kind of mysterious, kind of impressionistic.

I then show them this picture, http://sharpiron.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/classic-jesus.jpg and show how they are the same tones.
They see the similarities, but like the second. After some thought, it makes Jesus look like a movie star, like he just went to Glamour Shots. It's doesn't look real, and yet, that is the image burned on everyone's memory when you ask them what Jesus looks like. (There are no pictures, no paintings of the time, just centuries later. He is portrayed as blond and blue haired, black, asian, or whatever the people of the land were. God was made in man's image.)

Then I explain that it is called the (Urine) Christ (I don't want it to get wash-my-mouth-out censored).

Now, they disgusting!! That is so disgusting!!

I then ask them why "eat my body and drink my blood" is not disgusting, and how, to an outsider, it sounds barbaric, canabalistic, and yes, disgusting.

I then show them a picture of The Passion, which focuses not on love and compassion of Jesus, but the torture that Jesus indured. I ask them if this is art. Most say yes. I ask them why torture is art, why graphic violence is art. They start to have trouble explaining why one is "art" but another is "not", and reconsider a lot of their ideas, mostly because I don't tell them what to believe, but challenge what they believe, and make them come to their own conclusion.

Marat-Sade, a play written in the 60s, was called, "Theater Cruelty." The play is about the French Revolution, directed by the Marqui de Sade (the origin of the word "sadism"), and acted out by "inmates of an asylum." The Marqui, in the play, cruelly and ironically matches mental illness with the role, or makes complete opposite roles (the person who is going to murder Marat has narcalepsy.)

When I saw the show, the inmates who weren't acting would stare down the audience. One would point to you, and mouth, "YOU'RE LATE!!" As the play continues, the inmates go in and out of the "4th wall", interacting with the audience, making them uncomfortable. As the Revolution climaxes, the inmates revolt as well, killing guards, climbing up the walls, and running out of the theater.

It makes you feel very uneasy.

Is it art? Yes, but not for some people. Some people want to see a play, passively watch, and as they leave, say, "well, that was nice," and put it out of their minds once they hit the door. They don't want to work. They want to sit and watch, and not think, like TV.

The same is true with art. I used to have arguments about Pollack's work. Fellow students would say, "I wouldn't want that on my wall." I said, "Michelangelo's David is a masterpiece, but it's 13 feet tall. I wouldn't want that in my living room. "Art" isn't "what I put on my wall because it matches my couch." It's more complicated than that.

There is pop art (comics made into huge art pieces, to challenge people's idea of "art". There are panels painted all one color (the first time that it was ever done) to question people's ideas of art, and Duchamp, that would find objects, put them in a museum so that they were out of context and often unrecognizable, and then call it "scrulpture." Sometimes art is simply the idea.

Too many people have an idea that all art is "pretty," and sometimes it's not. It's not unlike movies. You can watch a scary movie, like Psycho. You can watch a beautiful movie, like Amelie. You can watch a suspenseful movie, like North by Northwest.

No one argues whether they are or aren't "movies."

But people's attitude about art is akin to saying, "I like Disney, and if the movie isn't like Little Mermaid, then it isn't a movie."

Today, people will look about the crucifix, a man impaled with spikes, bleeding, with his head turned upward toward God in total submission.

If you were to not know anything about Christ or Christianity, you would think it torture, cruel, disgusting, and ugly.

It isn't David. It isn't Venus di Milo, or any of the other things that we think of when we say "a beautiful sculpture.). And yet, people will look up at it in admiration, look upon it in appreciation, and look upon it

in beauty. And the reason is because of how strongly it makes people feel. That is one of the elements of art.

 

[quatona]

That's a different topic.

For all I understood that was the very topic of this thread.

From what I read, there was crack burning, marijuana burning, and music of the Sandanistas playing.

I think there was a lot said there, about caring only when we see it in a musuem, but not when we see it in real life, doing little about the drug problem (except arresting people and putting them in jail).

I ask my class what they think of a photograph of a crucifix that has a yellowy tint. They think it is ok. It's kind of blurry, kind of mysterious, kind of impressionistic.

I then show them this picture, http://sharpiron.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/classic-jesus.jpg and show how they are the same tones.
They see the similarities, but like the second. After some thought, it makes Jesus look like a movie star, like he just went to Glamour Shots. It's doesn't look real, and yet, that is the image burned on everyone's memory when you ask them what Jesus looks like. (There are no pictures, no paintings of the time, just centuries later. He is portrayed as blond and blue haired, black, asian, or whatever the people of the land were. God was made in man's image.)

Then I explain that it is called the (Urine) Christ (I don't want it to get wash-my-mouth-out censored).

Now, they disgusting!! That is so disgusting!!

I then ask them why "eat my body and drink my blood" is not disgusting, and how, to an outsider, it sounds barbaric, canabalistic, and yes, disgusting.

I then show them a picture of The Passion, which focuses not on love and compassion of Jesus, but the torture that Jesus indured. I ask them if this is art. Most say yes. I ask them why torture is art, why graphic violence is art.

Marat-Sade, a play written in the 60s, was called, "Theater Cruelty." The play is about the French Revolution, directed by the Marqui de Sade (the origin of the word "sadism"), and acted out by "inmates of an asylum." The Marqui, in the play, cruelly and ironically matches mental illness with the role, or makes complete opposite roles (the person who is going to murder Marat has narcalepsy.)

When I saw the show, the inmates who weren't acting would stare down the audience. One would point to you, and mouth, "YOU'RE LATE!!" As the play continues, the inmates go in and out of the "4th wall", interacting with the audience, making them uncomfortable. As the Revolution climaxes, the inmates revolt as well, killing guards, climbing up the walls, and running out of the theater.

It makes you feel very uneasy.

Is it art? Yes, but not for some people. Some people want to see a play, passively watch, and as they leave, say, "well, that was nice," and put it out of their minds once they hit the door.

The same is true with art. I used to have arguments about Pollack's work. Fellow students would say, "I wouldn't want that on my wall." I said, "Michelangelo's David is a masterpiece, but it's 13 feet tall. I wouldn't want that in my living room."

Too many people have an idea that all art is "pretty," and sometimes it's not. It's not unlike movies. You can watch a scary movie, like Psycho. You can watch a beautiful movie, like Amelie. You can watch a suspenseful movie, like North by Northwest.

No one argues whether they are or aren't movies.

But people's attitude about art is akin to saying, "I like Disney, and if the movie isn't like Little Mermaid, then it isn't a movie."

Today, people will look about the crucifix, a man impaled with spikes, bleeding, with his head turned upward toward God in total submission.

If you were to not know anything about Christ or Christianity, you would think it torture, cruel, disgusting, and ugly.

It isn't David. It isn't Venus di Milo, or any of the other things that we think of when we say "a beautiful sculpture.). And yet, people will look up at it in admiration, look upon it in appreciation, and look upon it

in beauty. And the reason is because of how strongly it makes people feel. That is one of the elements of art.

I don´t see anything in this post that I´d disagree with.

 

[meebs]

Which is more sick, to represent a dog starving to death, or to have thousands of starving dogs in Costa Rica, and do nothing or ignore the problem? And where do you think these starving dogs come from?

Whats your point here? I already recognised i made a mistake.

I already recognise people and other animals are starving to death, believe me im not ignorant of that fact. I do have compassion.

I just hope at least that dog was fed. I also hope that people recognised it for what it was, if it was a representation.

Or am i misunderstanding you?

 

[Beanieboy]

Whats your point here? I already recognised i made a mistake.

I already recognise people and other animals are starving to death, believe me im not ignorant of that fact. I do have compassion.

I just hope at least that dog was fed. I also hope that people recognised it for what it was, if it was a representation.

Or am i misunderstanding you?

On the contrary, I think I misunderstood you. Sorry.

While we can't be sure of the fate of the dog (the artist wouldn't say, but probably didn't want people to not see the forest for the trees), I have worked in a Museum. The guards are usually college age, and you know that even if the artist didn't feed him, one of the guards would have.

I doubt that he would have actually starved the dog, though, because that would seem contrary to his message, which is to see the situation, and take action. Starving the dog would have meant that he was unknowingly saying that you should create the very situation that you claim to care about.

I remember something like this on Joan of Arcadia. One of the students used his dead hamster as part of his sculpture, and there was a discussion on what is art. Again, I think too many people think "art is pretty", and that isn't what art is about at all. If all I ever painted were flowers, you would probably get bored of my work, no matter how "pretty" they looked. Good art should make you think, should move you some how, should make you want to see it again, should make you think.

One of the performances I saw at the Walker was a pair of artists of native and mexican decent. They were in the sculpture garden in a cage, watching TV. If you gave them something (a small trinket or money), they would read something, sing, or perform.

Strange, yeah? Art? Well, after listening to a song, and listening to a story (I couldn't understand because it was in a different language), I read about the piece.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo

This was something I had never heard of. Then, when I continued to watch people as they passed by, who thought it was cute, or funny, but certainly not art, I imaged the real Human Zoo, and how it must have seemed very similar - seeing nothing wrong with it, and throwing things to them to perform like an animal. They were thought to be somewhere between an ape and a person.

Makes you think. It was clever. And I love that it was a performance, and then gone forever.

Often, I see people saying, "That's not art!"

In one performance installation, flour sifted from the ceiling, down towards two library chairs. The flour came from a pile on the other side of the room, and as it sifted over the weeks, things were revealed in the flour. The names of flowers (play on words) were read in latin, so often, you had no idea what they were referring to (tying into the library tables and reference). There was a brail book of flower names, but it was under glass. The people that could see it couldn't read it, and the people that could read it couldn't touch the dots.

The experience, in my opinion, was one like watch a fire, or a fountain. It was very calming. Visually, you would sit and watch the sifting of the flour, the movement of the piles that formed on the tables. You would smell the flour. You would hear the scientific names. There was a lot going on.
One parent came up and asked if she could have a refund (they had just entered) because her child, overwhelmed, starting freaking out.

A patron came to the front desk and said, "Did you do that?" I said, "No. Artists don't typically work at the front desk." He said, "I could do that." I said, "If you could do that, then why didn't you? If it's really that easy, why aren't you making art?" I then asked him what he thought about the giant 3way plug that hung in the lobby. He said, "that's not art. " I asked him about the Spoon and Cherry Bridge. He loved that. Same artist.

There is always the "I could do that" to determine whether it is art or not.
We don't say, "That isn't music. I could sing that." And yet, we call these people singers, and what they sing, music. We don't question whether or not it's music.
Only with art.

Maybe if more people realized that yes, that can create art, anyone can, there would be less of a tendency to attack art, but to contemplate it.

 

[Phred]

By my definition of art it is... by my definition of horrible it also is.

This thread also points out one of the sad deficiencies of human beings... our ability to become immune to that which we see every day and only react to the unusual. If one of these artists took a dog and waterboarded it... why, you'd all be screaming. Yet if they take someone they call a "terrorist" you look the other way. Obviously a dog can't be a "terrorist" so that's inhumane.

Yet, would you have released that dog? Be honest now... there are no shelters down there, no places to take it. Releasing it means you take it home and you care for it. It's a sick, scroungy ill-fed dog. Would you have cut the rope? I wouldn't. I have three young kids to look out for. Who knows what diseases that dog is carrying?

So while I love all the outrage let's be serious... you wouldn't have done a thing. You might have rationalized it somehow but you would have just gone on as you always do... as you always have. Isn't that how we've gotten in the mess we are now?

 

[karisma]

This wasn't a US exhibit; this was in a third world country. Starving dogs litter the street there, it's a way of life, and I don't think we can necessarily assume anyone was feeding this dog. And I find it highly questionable that the other article said the dog just managed to run away. This is a guarded art gallery. I find that highly unlikely.

I found more information which is cited from the CaliforniaAggie online:

"Last August at a Costa Rican art reception, one exhibition roused more attention than expected. In one corner of the salon-turned-gallery, an emaciated dog was tied to a wall. Its involuntary mission was to be on display as an artistic message, and was accompanied by a statement on the wall created with dog food reading "You are what you read."

The guilty artist, Guillermo "Habacuc" Vargas, had paid two children to capture the dog from the street to use for the exhibit. Already in poor condition, the dog was refused any care by Vargas' orders, and within a day of being on display it passed away.

And for those crying by the thought of a dog left to die in a white corner of an art gallery, now for Vargas' artist's statement. This display, he claimed, was a response to the death of Natividad Canada, who was killed in Costa Rica by two rottweilers guarding a place Canada intended to rob. Vargas meant to show that no concern was given to the individual until after his death, much like the starving orphaned dog.

"The importance to me is the hypocrisy of the people where an animal is the focus of attention where people come to see art but not when it's in the street starving to death," Vargas was quoted on a variety of Costa Rican blogs.

The center of attention, in this case the canine, suffered due to Vargas' artistic desire - and this makes the installation a cruel act inflicted on a helpless victim. Vargas was definitely not referencing Kafka's "A Hunger Artist." The dog did not voluntarily starve or sacrifice its own life in the name of art."

http://media.www.californiaaggie.co...Entertainment/Morality.Dictates-3103522.shtml

 

[Beanieboy]

What does "you are what you read" mean?

 

[karisma]

Well I imagine he is referring to the burglar who was attacked and killed by the two rottweilers.

 

[Beanieboy]

"EXPLANATION OF GALERIA CODICE
Managua, 19 of October
Gallery Codice from its creation in 1991, has promoted the Central American, but specially the Nicaraguans visual arts, as much in the national level, like in regional and the international. In Codice they have exposed great Central American teachers, as well as consolidated and emergenging artists. The contemporary languages of the universal art also have had space in Codice, reason why periodically it welcomes samples of conceptual art. With that spirit, Thursday 16 of August just last No.1 Exhibition appeared, of the Costa Rican artist, Guillermo Vargas, known artistically as HABACUC.

One of the exposed works consisted of presenting/displaying a famélico dog that Habacuc gathered off the street, and during the exhibition he appeared moored with a nylon cord, that was subject as well to another cord that hung of two nails in a corner of the Gallery. Habucuc named the dog "Natividad" in tribute to the Nicaraguan Natividad Canda (24 years) that died devoured by two Rottweiler dogs in a factory of San Jose, Costa Rica, the dawn of Thursday 10 of November of 2005.

The dog remained in the premises three days, from the 5pm afternoon of Wednesday 15 of August. He was loose all along in the inner patio, except the 3 hours that the sample lasted, was fed regularly with dog food that the same Habucuc brought. Surprise, to the dawn of Friday 17, the dog escaped happening through the iron doors of the main entrance of the building, while the nocturnal watchman who finished feeding cleaned it the outer sidewalk of the same one.

The Gallery Codice reserves the right of guarding by the quality of the exposed works, respecting at any moment the creativity of the artist and it has never tried to exert no type of censorship, as long as they do not attempt against the elementary principles of the ethics and much less than they imply the life of a living being, is human or animal. I thought to remain with "Natividad", but he preferred to return to his own habitat. I celebrate the one that so many people in the international level have been annoying by the declarations offered by Habacuc, in which she maintained that its intention was to let die to the starvation dog, which is of its absolute responsibility. When fulfilling informing the truth into the facts, I hope that all those same people have also elevated their voice of repudio when Natividad Canda was devoured by the Rottweiler.

Kindly, Juanita Bermúdez
Director Gallery Codice Managua, Nicaragua"

 

[karisma]

"This display, he claimed, was a response to the death of Natividad Canada, who was killed in Costa Rica by two rottweilers guarding a place Canada intended to rob. Vargas meant to show that no concern was given to the individual until after his death, much like the starving orphaned dog."

So, conflicting reports? I still find it highly questionable that a dog could just escape a guarded art gallery.

 

[Ryal Kane]

Hmm. Interesting conflicting facts on this one. Either way, he seems to have made a point and in neither case does he seem to have been especially cruel to the dog. Interesting.
The fact that we're four pages into a discussion on it half a world away shows that it certainly worked as a piece.