Your Daily Vegan says: down with exploitative excuses for “art”

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Extreme Self readers, meet KD Traegner. She’s the dynamo behind Your Daily Vegan, an online hub for animal advocates, and an all-around excellent resource for news, views, rants and (eloquent) rambles. KD and I have swapped spots for a day, and she’s put together this post on the use of non-human animals in art. Check out my post for her, where I debunk myths about abolitionist animal rights. And please, if you like (or loathe) what you read, chime in.

I was pretty excited when Katie contacted me to do a guest spot on her site. And, bonus! Katie agreed to a guest spot on Your Daily Vegan, which rocks.  So, all I had to do was decide what to write about. And I didn’t even need to think long. I had spent my entire morning discussing it. Animals in Art and, what does veganism have to do with it?

Over 14,000 artists, art historians, art curators and visual art professionals believe it’s a violation of free speech to criminalize the depiction of animal cruelty in works of art – especially for profit (ie: exhibiting in a gallery for sale). The College Art Association (CAA), has filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) for a Supreme Court hearing on October 6 that will revisit legislation which makes it illegal to sell depictions of cruelty to animals.

The CAA’s issue with this law is the exception within it that bars works from prosecution if they have “serious artistic value.” They claim that the law does not define this exception and leaves open the possibility that contemporary works are often not accepted by the public initially and are not valued as serious at the time they are created. They cite such artists as Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol who were not immediately appreciated, but who are now regarded as major figures in the history of art. They believe the law could be used to “punish the expression of unpopular ideas.”

The problem is that art can so subjective. Artists enjoy pressing the envelope to provoke and occasionally outrage us. They are always asking us to question our own preconceived notions of what art really is. One of the downsides of pressing the envelope is that the artist could emerge into areas that shock and outrage a public, who doesn’t believe it’s art.  Where does artistic license end and animal cruelty begin? You decide:

On March 19, 2008, artist Adel Abdessened opened an exhibit called “Don’t Trust Me” at the San Fransisco Art Institute.  The exhibit included six video screens showing a loop of various non-human animals being bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer next to a brick wall. The non-human animals included a goat, pig, sheep, ox, and a horse. The exhibit was finally taken down after thousands of people protested.

Or how about the woman in Pennsylvania who gave her cats body piercing so that she could sell them as “Gothic Kitties”?  She defends her position saying she, “…didn’t intend to do anything cruel and that she didn’t see any difference between piercing a human and piercing a cat”.

Worse yet, how about BMEzine? BMEzine is the world’s largest online body modification community. And they have an entire online gallery of modified companion animals. Oh sure, they have the standard bullshit disclaimer saying:

“NOTE: BME does not condone the torture and abuse of animals in any way (although we urge you to consider whether these pictures are any worse than torturing, killing, and eating an animal, or worse than cutting a dog’s tail off for looks). These pictures are presented for documentary purposes only and WE DO NOT RECOMMEND OR SUGGEST PIERCING OR OTHERWISE MODIFYING ANIMALS IN ANY WAY!”

Really? The mere presence of a large collection of photos displaying piercings and tattoos is only going to spur interest and encourage such behavior. In fact, Wim Delvoye tattoos pigs in Beijing for a living. He is known for tattooing Louis Vuitton logos, various works, smiley faces, mythical creatures, and more on the backs of the pigs. Then the pigs are sold for thousands of dollars to collectors, who either keep them as companion animals or purchase the tattooed skin of the dead pigs.

Then there’s Damien Hirst’s work. One of his most famous pieces is The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. It basically consists of a shark in a vitrine, preserved in formaldehyde. Or, if sharks aren’t your thing, there’s Away from the Flock. Which is a sheep in a glass tank, preserved in formaldehyde. Then, the ever original artist produced Mother and Child Divided. This time the work consisted of a cow and her calf sliced in half and put in a glass tank, preserved in formaldehyde.

Another – A Florida college senior was charged with animal cruelty when he/she dipped 40 live baby mice into resin, then cut them up into cubes for an art project.

Nathalia Edenmont, a Russian artist, kills cats, mice, chickens and rabbits for her surreal still life photographs.  Wetterling Gallery in Stockholm was one of the first to show Edenmont’s work. They defended their decision saying,

“Most people who see Nathalia’s pictures for the first time are impressed by how beautiful they are….Slowly you realise that the animal is dead, that the animal has died for the sake of the picture…Nathalia’s pictures…are so beautiful – and the insight into the reality behind them gives rise to thoughts of people’s shallowness and double standards. Many of us eat meat, wear leather or use make-up that has been tested on animals, without arousing especially strong reactions. But when a picture shows a dead rabbit, all hell breaks loose…There is nothing illegal in Nathalia’s art. She has killed the animals in as humane a way as possible. Has she been guilty of a moral crime? We do not think so.”

Seriously. I can’t comprehend their position. And we can’t forget Hermann Nitsch from Austria, who uses the entrails of lambs in his ritualistic performances and paints with the blood of non-human animals.

The list is staggering, I could go on and on. If you want to see for yourself, google “animal cruelty in art” and see what I mean. Exploiting non-human animals in “art” is not art and “artistic license” is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Torturing and killing non-humans so senselessly should be punishable by law. Sadly, far too often this isn’t the case.

Then again, how can we be outraged that animals are dying for our viewing pleasure, while still permitting them to die for our palate’s pleasure? We can’t. It’s time to rethink the humans use of animals. Veganism goes beyond what you put in your mouth, it is in every facet of life. Animal exploitation is everywhere and rampant. It’s up to you what you do about it.

In art, in life, non-human animals deserve better.  This is not a free speech issue.  This is a matter of life, and of death.