The Smell of Scandal in the Afternoon
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Oh dear. I love an art scandal, especially one like this that is ripping up the internet. Puerto Rican artist Guillermo Habacuc Vargas, got some street kids to catch an almost dead mongrel, and then tied it up in the gallery, where it starved to death. Well well... hell hath no fury than a animal lover scorned. Type his name into google, and see what comes up.All I can say to them, who are by the most part American, is count your Iraqi death toll before you worry about this guy.
Not that I necessarily agree to killing animals, canaries or whatever, for the sake of an exhibition, but it does bring home the environment we exist in, where a scurvy cur has more appeal than a dying person. It seems to me to be a good art work... I'm just glad I wasn't there.
Enjoy your oil.
Thanks to Jon Kope for the tip.
posted by Robert Sloon at 2:33 PM
17 Comments:
I agree that there are issues of sensationalism and newsworthiness at work here. But the major problem is that life is cheap, be it human or canine...
or canary.
So, was the gallery a Dog-Hospice? Did the dying dog refuse its food because it was sick? Or was it starved to death? Does it matter? To me, it does.
The artwork does not affect me. Dogs die every day. Man is bound by sentiment to his best friend like a dog is chained by habit to his vomit.
But the provocation annoys me intensely. I dont need SPECTACLES like this to remind me that Man is a Wild Beast. I AM A GODDAM CANARY. THE MINE IS TOXIC. BLAH BLAH WHATS NEW?
This Vargas & the other ( the pin-up king) both artists, both of their time, who cares, what is for supper...
So you don't give a damn if dogs or people or anything else starve to death every day but you are driven into a state of intense annoyance by provocative art. May you die slowly you fucking stupid cunt
Dear Anonymous 7.34 , you misunderstand me: let me try to be clear: it was stupid art that annoyed me (at that moment ). My engagement with The State of the World generates much heavier voltage than 'annoyance'. I refuse to admit that I am defeated. But let's be honest, we have made a mess of things and perhaps art, and artifice, and science, and technology, AND the Capitalist System are all implicated in this mess-age, perhaps The Human is but a canary, an early warning bird, who takes no heed of the signs (the worm?) because it sits) on HIS/HER OWN FUCKIN' SHOULDER.
If it was once brave and audacious to make art of such vehemence, art whose means mirrored the horror which it (presumably) responded to, did it really do more than participate at a remove in the media frenzy, the secondary spectacle? What was really achieved ? Fame, perhaps. And now we are left with this, an extension of the language, a bbrader range of strategies, a bigger box of tricks. Sorry, pal, "all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again"- does a dead dog make any difference,now? The world affects me more than your art...
enough with the psycho-bable - poor fucking dog.
Life is no way to treat an animal
It's a very sweet looking dog
woof woof...barking up all the wrong trees
on the one side of space-time, Joseph Beuys and a Coyote, and on the other, Vargas and a Starving Dog.
A dog in the hand is worth more than a dog in the Bush? Why does that sound pornographic?vul
from the dog's perspective: rescued from the streets, the traffic, the boots, the half-bricks. To die in peace. On a cool smooth gray floor. To be attended to, to be noticed, to be the object of the gaze of others,recognition of a kind - before the long night of nothing...
A dog's life, gone.
haha canary haha
suppose we can't have a starving american next? granted the show would have to run for a phenominally long time.......ooo ooo what about non starving american fed to starving dog as act of martyrdom for animal rights?
I imagine this event at the Goodman in Cape Town. The sheen of the floor, the dying dog's yellow piss, globular, unabsorbed. The pristine floor. A footprint picked out by high raised puddles of piss, the miniscus gleaming gold - the light serene, the sounds of traffic almost hushed, suffocated. The footprints squelch across the immaculate buffed epoxy. "Oh my God, I stepped in IT'S piss". The glass falls, tinkles, jewels of red wine (like blood in vomit!) pollute the pure puddles of oily dog urine.
I fucking hate stupid fucking people more than ever. Especially stupid fucking artists who use art as an excuse to do anything they like. Stupid fuckers. Fuck off and Die. Preferably while tied down in a gallery.
arrrrrtissststtsts must dieeeee! he he he (evil laugh trails of into the dark night whilst coyote howls).
but serrriously - some fucking hoi polloi collector/ gallery going type could have saved little bow-wow easily. hello doggie - here is some water...are you hungry? I can just get of my fat fucking arse and go get you something to eat. But noooooooo...wait for doggie to die and just blame the artist - much easier.
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