It's Art Baby

Three horrendous art stories in one day, so I'm including them altogether. First, about me.

Did I tell you guys the story about the artist I briefly dated in college? No? Well, I might have and I'm retelling it here because it's relevant. He and I worked together in college publications. He did the art. I, along with some talented writers, did the copy and editing and some design here and there. We got along great professionally and dated a bit. During the dating time, he thought it would be fun to do an experiment for a speech he had to give about appreciating art. So, one day, we went to a local well-known gallery and Jon brought the drop cloths he used for his painting. He presented them to the gallery owner as "art". They were just canvases filled with pain splatter. The gallery owner was enthusiastic, ebullient even. Jon and I just looked at each other trying not to laugh out loud. It was ridiculous. The "art" had no form or structure, no beauty and it was a dirty mess, besides. That passed for art. And that was the point of Jon's speech.

These days, all sorts of crap passes for art. It can be brutal, base, degrading, formless, and empty and be called art. Here are a few examples:

John Hawkins notes how a starving dog was tortured and it was called art. John says it's "shockingly cruel". Only if you have a moral compass:

A Costa Rican artist - Guilermo Vargas Habacuc - has generated international outrage with this work of "art".

He took a starving dog off the streets of San Jose, Costa Rica and tied it up in an art gallery. Food was placed where the dog could smell it - but the poor creature could not reach the food. The dog starving to death was Habacuc's work of art.

You want an example of the slippery slope of an art world where anything goes? This is just an extension of the moral depravity of artists like Robert Mapplethorpe with his bullwhip in the anus... of Andrew Serrano with "Piss Christ"... when you have acceptance of works like those, it is not a tremendous moral leap to starving a dog. It's all a matter of degree.

And I told you about the girl who (supposedly) got pregnant and caused abortions for art. Now, Allah says that it can't possibly be true. And that was my first instinct--that it was all a hoax, but in this day and age, you can't be sure. Still, I was wondering what "herbal" concoction she was taking to induce abortion and why she wouldn't have thought it important to visit her doctor after creating "multiple" abortions. Allah says:

Via Gateway Pundit, it can’t be real. It’s too broadly parodic of too many things: the trivialization of abortion, modern art’s fascination with effluvium, amoral academic culture justified as a form of faux-profound “consciousness-raising,” etc etc etc. All that’s missing is some sort of representation of Christ as a gay Nazi.

Right. The problem these days is that, how do you know for sure?

And finally, the piece d'resistance: Stomping on the flag. It's like, so totally, edgy, man. Rachel Lucas says:

Assholes. Well, if the right to put flags on the floor and walk on them is protected by the First Amendment, then so should be the right to pick those flags up off the floor out of respect. College kids and liberals never do seem to grasp that, eh?

She has the video and lots of comments, too.

Art, my ass. This is about personal notoriety at the expense of others. This is also known as exploitation.

More on exploitation as art here and here. In these cases it's children.