When does art cross the line?
Warning: Content in this post will be disturbing.
I consider myself open minded, especially when it comes to appreciating art. I am very particular over which artists I love, but have respect for art of all kinds. While many people in Ottawa scoff at the National Gallery of Canada’s purchase of Barnett Newman’s Voice of Fire, I have listened carefully to both sides of the argument for and against the value of his work. There are some exceptions, but most abstract art doesn’t do anything for me - artists sometimes make work that is entirely inaccessible to anyone other than those they have explained their thoughts to. I like art where the artist has thought about the viewer (even if just a little bit) and is making connections. Or, if abstract there is still something tangible for the viewer to seize upon and/or identify with. Abstract art that works for me shows personality, insight, talent, a creative keen eye and is not just ruler-ed lines reinforcing rigidity and cold rationalism. Does that make sense? One of my favourite types of art is new genre public performance art, which requires the viewer as a participant to complete the work of art - necessitating aesthetic collaboration and creating beautiful experiences. I like it when art does not fit into galleries and spills about clumsily with expanding influence. (or sometimes, as rare performances do, it is experienced only by a few and slowly fades according to the memories of those witnesses)
At any rate, there is a point at which art to me becomes unacceptable. Or maybe, it passes out of the realm of art and into something reprehensible. This is especially when it comes to non-human animals, since most artists understand ethical treatment of their fellow human animal subjects. Over the past six months, two artworks have come to my attention that fit into this category of non-art or art that challenges ethical norms. I hesitate to write about them since in some way it fulfills the efforts of these artists to get attention through shock value; but while I wish they had never happened I find them thought provoking. Many believe artistic censorship to be wrong, but should censorship be put into place when art seems to breach ethical boundaries involving living subjects?
1. Guillermo Vargas Habacuc, Costa Rica, unknown title.
(image via ◊ Jolita) For an exhibition in Nicaragua he had some children help him hunt a street dog whom he then tied to the walls of the gallery and allowed to die of hunger and thirst. Following the show he has been invited to participate in 2008 in the prestigious Central American Biennial of Honduras, while an international campaign to collect signatures is attempting to have that invitation revoked.
About the work, he said:
The name of the dog was Natividad, and I let him die of hunger in the sight of everyone, as if the death of a poor dog was a shameless media show in which nobody does anything but to applaud or to watch disturbed. In the place that the dog was exposed remain a metal cable and a cord. The dog was extremely ill and did not want to eat, so in natural surroundings it would have died anyway; thus they are all poor dogs: sooner or later they die or are killed.
2. Marco Evaristti, Helena. In what he describes as a kind of social experiment and which is considered to be on the borderline between public performance and sculpture, Evaristti sets up 10 blenders each filled with a goldfish and invites the gallery visitors to press the button that will pulverize the goldfish.
On his own site and describing Helena, it is written: “The artist says that this was yet another project on the theme of beauty’s transience - the fine line between existence and nothingness.”
Anna Karina Hofbauer, Art Historian, writes:
Evaristti’s idea was to divide visitors to the museum into three groups: “The idiot, who pushed the button, the voyeur, who loves to watch and the moralist.” According to Evaristti, more than one person pushed a button at Trapholt. At Kunstraum Dornbirn a female visitor did the deed, knowing full well that she was being recorded on video in the act of taking the life of a goldfish. … The participatory element in this otherwise sculptural work leads to a modification of reality, in which it is not Evaristti who comes over as irresponsible and ??, but where he passes on the ethical and moral issues to the observer.
While he was charged with animal cruelty, in the end BBC reports:
…a court in Denmark has now ruled that the fish were not treated cruelly, as they had not faced prolonged suffering.
The fish were killed “instantly” and “humanely”, said Judge Preben Bagger.
The court had earlier heard an expert witness from the blenders’ maker, Moulinex, that the fish had probably died within one second of the blender being switched on.
A vet also told the court that the fish would have died painlessly.
In further quotes from the same article
The exhibit was created by Chilean-born Danish artist Marco Evaristti, who was apparently trying to test visitors’ sense of right and wrong.
Mr Evaristti said at the time he wanted to force people to “do battle with their conscience”.
The idea, he said, was to “place people before a dilemma: to choose between life and death.”
“It was a protest against what is going on in the world, against this cynicism, this brutality that impregnates the world in which we live,” he said.
Since I believe that animals do have rights, my stance on these two works is that they are unacceptable - actions that should not have been allowed within any public or other space, much less that of a gallery. (If I am not mistaken, Helena was put into galleries twice?) I am speechless about them. I have read about and thought about the perspectives and possible intentions of the artists who set up these works, but along with all of the other ways in which we have abused our power over animals I am sorry for it.
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