Dog Dies for the Sake of Art
Link: Artist Leaves Dog to Die on Exhibition Display
“… a man who calls himself an artist. His name is Guillermo Vargas Habacuc and the year is 2007. Guillermo is one of the artists taking part in an art exhibition that takes place at a Costa Rican gallery – pompously called “Centro Nacional de la Cultura” (National Center for Culture). He pays a bunch of kids to catch the street dog, which he cruelly baptizes “Natividad” (Spanish for “birth”). His aim is to make an artistic statement about the fragility and the misery in which all dogs – indeed, all human beings live, and he achieved just that by letting the dog starve to death tied to a wall, in plain view of the exhibition visitors, some of whom demanded futilely that the dog be released.
All he did, he says, was to make a show of its death in order to bring home the truth about how all dogs live miserable lives. “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,” the so-called artist brags on his blog.”
So today, I came across this article. My initial reaction was “holy shit”, to put it bluntly. The fact that this man is so proud of his “art” is not what vexes me. It’s the fact that the gallery actually permitted him to showcase this. Sure, art basically has no boundaries. Heck, you gotta love artists – they can call any crap they make as “art” and still get validation. But this is beyond my understanding. Although the death of the dog struck my emotions the way art is intended to, I just feel as if there could have been other alternatives to portray the “miserable lives of dogs”. PAINT vs tying a starving dog to a wall in some gallery to be seen as “art” rather than a living thing? Come Charles, let’s be artists so that way, we’re not bound by SOLID concepts of right/wrong and success/failure like most healthy people.
Even if the poor thing was going to die in the first place, why exhibit it’s inevitable death for people to marvel upon? That’s just as cruel, demeaning, and inhumane as killing the dog yourself. In conclusion, I can’t see myself hanging that or displaying that in my home.
- Jimilyn
I agree with this 100%. Very sick individual who calls himself an “artist” this person has no heart. I only hope that people understand that everything under the sun should be respected and cared for, there is a reason for everything and everyone in this world. This person who calls himself an “artist” is a disgrace to real artists and their respectful work. This man is no artist he is a cruel human being that should be watched carefully as God only knows what kind of sick things can further come from his distraught mind….