is this art?

[kortick]

LATELY, a number of emails have been doing the rounds, condemning the actions of the artist, Guillermo Vargas ‘Habacuc’. Last year, the Costa Rican ‘artist’ is alleged to have paid some children to chase and catch an abandoned dog. He is said to have tied the animal by a very short rope to the wall of an art gallery in Managua and left it there for several days, without food or water, until it died. During this time, many people visited the art gallery, paying absolutely no attention to the torment of the dying dog. The prestigious Central American Biennial exhibition incomprehensibly decided to consider this barbarous act as art, and Habacuc has been invited to repeat his cruel action at the Biennial of 2008 in Honduras. -- ---------------------------------------------- now there is a petition going around to stop him from killing another dog. I am not trying to get anyone to sign anything. I want the opinion of people here-does this constitute art? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cBBudN0_-E here is a video of it. i offer no opinion. i ask for feedback.

[mista_mo]

How could this be considered art? what type of story does it attempt to tell? what message does it send out to the population? All this is is a sick f*ck who doesn't have the intelligence to see that killing a living thing cannot be considered art. Some say that art is subjective, that it appeals to a select group of individuals. What group does this appeal to? How could it appeal to anyone outside of animal snuff films? Where do these people come from?

[Terran]

Is it art?....sure....anything displayed for others to see or to know about is art ....whether it makes a statement or not.... Is it in bad taste...absolutely Is it cruel...definitely... It would have been better and less cruel if he took a dog from an animal "shelter" that had already been killed and put that on the rope in front of the gallery.....

[kortick]

I underderstand what you are saying but to me anything put foward to see or know about is information. art is defined as the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance. does this dog display meet that criterea?

[DubiousComforts]

i offer no opinion. I certainly will. This poor excuse for a "man" is a sick-o that will do anything to garner attention for himself, and anyone that tolerates this type of behavior--each and every slack-jawed moron who walked through that exhibit and did nothing, for example--is a brain-dead idiot. There's a blog about this hack which links to the online petition, but I offer that petitions are useless when you're dealing with criminals and insane people.

[Terran]

art is defined as the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance. does this dog display meet that criterea? I would say it does...it does generate a visceral reaction...a strong emotional response...the arrangement and display is more than "ordinary significance"...It creates a discourse, and if the artist generated these emotions and reactions from people intentionally than it is "art"...even if it is in horrible "taste"... "Art"....*shrugs*...it can be anything...

[SymphonicX]

Someone asked me to define art once, and I simply came back with "skillfull representation"....this is definitely NOT skillfull representation.

[kortick]

I have always associated art as a creative medium ex. you take a blank canvas and create a painting, or a blank page becomes a story, a silent room becomes filled with musical sounds in a new sequence, a scupture appears out of a lump of clay or various odd things. it is always where there was nothing the mind now created something unique. this takes something ( living dog) and makes it into a corpse. something that nature would do eventually so it is not a new achievement. But Terran is right, art is very subjective. i guess this is the art of dying (or killing) my thoughts only

[Dommm]

Then he should have painted a picture of his vision of the dog dying not killed the poor thing, then most people can be subjective about it, not sickened???

[Terran]

I have always associated art as a creative medium ex. you take a blank canvas and create a painting, or a blank page becomes a story, a silent room becomes filled with musical sounds in a new sequence, a scupture appears out of a lump of clay or various odd things. Yeah but that association leaves out "conceptual art"....where the process or concept behind the object, whether the object be found or created, is more important than the actual object....(There are many many forms of conceptual art) "Art" is not something that has to appeal to others...hell many serial killers create "art" using their victims as materials and profilers sometimes become "art critics" to some degree while trying to profile the killer...."What is the killer trying to say with this victim?"...."What is the focal point of this 'piece'?" "What is the meaning of orientation of these objects?" etc etc..... Is this grotesque by most people's sensibilities? Hell yeah! This does not stop it from being "art" though... Then he should have painted a picture of his vision of the dog dying not killed the poor thing, then most people can be subjective about it, not sickened??? Maybe the concept behind this piece was to show something about humans.....the concept being a dog tied up to a museum starving while people coming and looking at it, all doing nothing, completely immune and distanced from something horrible happening right in front of them....and not untill the dog dies does anyone even remotely care...... A painting of a dead dog would be difficult to draw this level of conversation or depth...

[DubiousComforts]

Is this grotesque by most people's sensibilities? Hell yeah! This does not stop it from being "art" though... Bulls**t, any serial rapist or murderer could claim the same thing. You may argue that rape/murder involves human beings and that animals have no rights, and I'll counter that no human being has the right to inflict cruelty or death upon another being for the sake of "art." There would be artistic content if the numbnuts invloved was smart enough to document the suffering of stray dogs in Costa Rica through photography or a similar medium in such a way as to inspire people to deal with the problem. But that would take brains, talent and craftsmanship.

[kortick]

Following that logic out to its ultimate conclusion terran, I guess it is safe to conclude that the Nazis were perhaps the greatest artists known to mankind. Many serial killers proclaim their "work" to be art. But is it so? The death of this dog may provide amusement to some, it may also provide spectacle but does it make it art? and would you as a nation wish to be represented by such a form of art?

[MikePizzoff]

Artistic? No! Psychotic? Yes!

[major jay]

I guess it is safe to conclude that the Nazis were perhaps the greatest artists known to mankind. Beetoven is good. But what about the people that made Mad Foxes?

[Terran]

"Taste" or decency even morality does not dictate "art".... With the advent of such things as performance art and conceptual art anything is art, as long as it is portrayed as art.... ....Im serious You can find similiar discussions like this all over the art "world"...and some like to say "If you have to discuss it, than it probally is art"