Portrait

i have always had some problems with modern art. although i can appreciate most of it, there have been times when i’ve felt that the term ‘modern art’ is just a way out for talentless hacks. a way to sell anything, no matter how wild or unartistic. when someone farts paint onto a canvas and then can sell it for millions of dollars, that just seems to me as though people are undermining the very purpose and value of real art.

i’m somewhat old fashioned in this respect; i love the masters of the renaissance, i envision them passing each other in the street in florence, working together, being friends. all the world’s most precious thinkers and creators living together in the same time, in the same place. i have stood before vermeer’s ‘the girl with the pearl earring’ crying, and just looking at da vinci and michaelangelo on the glossy pages of art books can give me goosebumps. i see the perfect figures, the expressions on their faces, the hands, so delicate and fine, clothes so perfectly defined you can feel the breeze, the landscapes, the thought that must have gone into it. and not only are they pretty to look at. no, these paintings are all cunning and clever. god, they say, is in the details. and so it pisses me off when someone can, say, line up cereal boxes and call it art. i love salvador dali and frida kahlo, but perhaps that’s as modern as i can get.

not to say that the new world hasn’t produced great artists; i’ve seen the evidence that proves that the one thing our time is not lacking, perhaps, is great art. great, thought provoking, beautiful art. but does all art have to be beautiful? maybe not. but if the experience is visual, then i can’t imagine that it’s ok for it to be be crap to look at either. perhaps finding the balance between integrity and aesthetic quality is the trick, a way to stimulate intellect and satisfy the eye.

so trust me, when i heard about guillermo vargas’ alleged ‘dog exhibit’, i was quick to condemn it.

however, it seems that the facts were misconstrued by the press that leapt into action, taking the few facts that they did know and assuming the rest. it’s so natural; people hear about a dog being taken off the streets and displayed in a gallery, which in itself seems inhumane, and then sit around forming conspiracy theories and signing petitions.

many sites on the internet now state that the facts have been renewed and that many reliable sources have confirmed that a) the dog was not starved, it was supposed to appear so for the purposes of the exhibition which lasted three hours, before and after which it was fed by the artist himself. it looked thin and sick, because it was a stray and was probably starving anyway. b) the dog did not die, it had escaped the gallery one night.

i’m not justifying the artist taking the dog into a gallery and tying it up in the first place, which seems somewhat strange to me anyway, nor can i see the artistic value in this exhibit. however, the artist is quoted as having said that the point of the exhibition was to highlight the hypocrisy of people; they make a starving stray dog the center of their attention in an art gallery, but would ignore hundreds like itself were they to see it on the street. i think that’s interesting.

what was also interesting was how easily people get riled up about all the wrong things. the mass hype being created on sites and in groups on networking sites like facebook was phenomenal. normal folk were turned into bleeding-heart activists, penning line after line about the inhumanity of starving and killing the dog. oh the cruelty of it all. i wondered if these same people would be as motivated to act if they were called upon to care for someone with HIV, clean the beach, stop taking their shopping in plastic bags, spend a day playing with a child affected by both the war and the tsunami, or as a matter of fact take in a stray cat or dog from the street and make a pet of it. people were angry about this artist and his exhibition; they were furious, enraged and therefore rendered both inarticulate and blind to the facts, swept up by the emotional and dramatic hysteria that came with believing the more scandalous story. the untrue one. the slightly exaggerated one.

sometimes it’s boring to be right.