No, animals do not have rights: but humans do have duties of care.
Guillermo Habacuc Vargas would really be most unfortunate if he were to meet me in a dark alley: or a well lit room come to that.
Sick, Sick, Sick.
April 18th, 2008 · 11 Comments
Tags: Art
11 responses so far ↓
1 Peter Risdon // Apr 18, 2008 at 11:54 am
“No, animals do not have rights: but humans do have duties of care.”
Exactly: responsibilities, not rights. This also applies to humans - what should we do for the homeless? Not what rights do they have.
Dark alley: yup.
2 Kay Tie // Apr 18, 2008 at 11:55 am
Rather than dark alleys, I prefer the imposed self-portrait idea.
3 TDK // Apr 18, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Snapes isn’t buying it
4 Peter Risdon // Apr 18, 2008 at 12:42 pm
The gallery admits the exhibition took place but back-pedalled about how the dog was treated. I’m not surprised. The latest campaign, from working artists, concerns an exhibition this year and post-dates the snopes piece. I think this is genuine.
5 Peter Risdon // Apr 18, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Oh, and the artist posted something to his myspace page admitting the dog died, but has now cleared out his profile.
6 JuliaM // Apr 18, 2008 at 12:53 pm
I vote we get a zoo to donate a tiger for his next project.
Oh, and I want a photoshoot of the artist alongside his ‘work’ about three, four days into the process. Warn the camera crew to wear macintoshes…
7 Eva // Apr 18, 2008 at 1:43 pm
I’m for the self portrait idea too, but in Tim’s dark alley, where starving dogs can get to him…
8 David Gillies // Apr 18, 2008 at 5:30 pm
There are strays in San Jose, but the idea that ‘tens of thousands’ of them die on the streets each year is nonsense. We’d be up to our eyeballs in rotting dog carcases if that were true.
9 Eva // Apr 18, 2008 at 6:54 pm
From this evening’s Evening Standard, the column by Brian Sewell about the Wellcome Trust’s exhibition of portraits showing people shortly before and after their deaths:
“…Without the distancing achieved through the artist’s sensibility, can such a disquieting thing be art? Should it, indeed, be done in a civilised society? Perhaps so. There is a precedent in in the work of Guillermo Habakkuk Vargas, who is to represent Costa Rica in the Cnetral American Biennale this year: in October last year he gained great notoriety by tethering a dog in an art gallery, utterly comfortless, and starving it to death for the aethetic satisfaction of his patrons - I have photographs of the gallery taken from the eye level of the dog at the vernissage, the guests drinking and conversing; other photographs record various stages of the animals’ starvation. This was to go too far and should, in any decent society, have resulted in prosecution, if not, first, in public intervention. The more violent death, by bludgeoning, of farm animals, among them a sheep, a cow, a deer and a horse, filmed by Parisian-base Algerian artist, Adel Abdessemed, was exhibited as art four weeks ago at rhe Art Institute of San Francisco. There, responding to public protest, the exhibition was suspended within a week.”
10 Monty // Apr 19, 2008 at 12:29 am
You know how we could get back at this b*stard don’t you?
We put together a montage of insults against the muslims and their religion, and attribute it to him. Publish it on a website, along with a photograph of the “artist”.
I hate these “artists” who are so selective about causing offence and outrage, but only against the law abiding.
11 Sue // May 7, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Absolutely barbaric - a disgrace to ‘Humanity’ This so-called artist should be made to suffer in the way that he caused suffering to another living creature.Anyone who can look at something like that , without doing anything to stop it , is in the same category as this barbarian. Lower than any form of life. I hope he pays dearly for this .
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