This story in Canada’s National Post describes the controversy at a Toronto art gallery over a particular piece of artwork, and the refusal of two of the gallery’s directors to condemn the piece.
What is it? Why, it’s the on-camera torture, by being skinned alive, of a housecat. A 17-minute tape, actually, in which the terrified animal is butchered while conscious. The artist, one Jesse Power, apparently made the tape to “comment on the death and suffering of animals used for meat.” He and two other men obtained, then killed, this helpless animal.
The two gallery directors, Mssrs. Brown and Borsin, have appeared at Power’s bail hearing. Which is fine, as far as it goes. But Brown also states in the article that “I don’t support the killing of animals for food or art, but whether it is art is not for us to answer.” (Mr. Browns notable contributions to the world of art include “ingesting primary-coloured foods and vomiting on two paintings he considered ‘banal’ – a seascape by Raoul Dufy at the Art Gallery of Ontario and a Mondrian at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.”)
He went on to say that “We’re against cruelty to animals, but these people want us to issue a statement that would define the limits of artistic freedom. It’s extortion.”
The chairman of the student union at the Ontario College of Art and Designm, which Powers attends and which funds the gallery, stated “The actions on the videotapes are abhorrent, immoral and illegal, but it is not our role to be arbiters of what is and what isn’t art.”
What a bunch of cowards–so afraid to violate the orthodoxy of the art world that they refuse to condemn this activity as beyond the pale. Heaven forbid anybody take a moral stand for anything, especially in the modern art community. Oh, they aren’t going to show the tape in the gallery–after all, it’s illegal. But they aren’t willing to go the next step and say it isn’t art, either.
Well, I’ll say it: Killing living beings is not art. It’s sick. A comment on the meat industry? Bullshit. It’s not that I can’t see the point behind it – that we as Westerners get inflamed over the killing of a housepet but not batting an eye over killing a cow. That’s a legitimate point to make, calling attention to cultural anomalies. But it can be made without torturing a defenseless animal to death on videotape. What makes it worse it that this animal’s life was wasted. Beyond the fact that it might have been somebody’s pet that got away, nobody ate this cat, nobody used it for fur, nobody did anything constructive with it. No, some too-hip artsy-fartsy schmuck tortured this poor animal for his own amusement, thereby completely wasting its life.
If killing is art, we can simply refer to Pol Pot as a performance artist. But he wasn’t. He was a butcher. And Power’s actions make him the moral equivalent of the meat producers upon which he claims to be commenting. In fact, they make him worse, because those people are at least providing wanted food. All this moron did was kill a cat. Any psychopath can do that.
Too bad his friends in the art community are too cowardly to tell him that.