Two controversial articles I stumbled across in my Internet travels:
1. Artist Leaves Dog to Die on Exhibition Display
Read: Here, Here, and Here
2. Yale Art Student Represents Abortion as "Creative Fiction"
Read: Here, Here, and Here
What are your reactions to these artistic statements? Is such art political? Justifiable? Should art be ethical, and if so, what are the standards?
Tell me your answers to these questions for the Tuesday in-class assignment.
Interesting Links
- The Feminist Newbie Forum
- Feminist Anti-Oppression Forum
- Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art
- Bust: Culture Vulture Links
- Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture
- Korean Council: Cyber Memorial
- National Organization for Women: Young Feminism
- Feminist Majority: Arts, Entertainment, Literature
- Main WMST 250 Class Blog
Labels
- American Dream (1)
- Announcements (7)
- Art and Capitalism (1)
- Art and Ethics (1)
- Assignment 3 (9)
- bell hooks (1)
- Colonialism (1)
- Congratuations (1)
- Controversial Art (2)
- Feminist Art (3)
- Final Paper (7)
- Gender (1)
- Gradebook (1)
- Group Work (1)
- In-class Assignments (13)
- Influential Women (1)
- Intersectionality (1)
- Introductions (1)
- Manifest Destiny (1)
- Mass Media (1)
- Matrix of Domination (1)
- Museum Papers (9)
- Museums (1)
- networking (1)
- Nuts n Bolts (1)
- Patricia Hill Collins (1)
- Project Link (1)
- Questions (1)
- Race (2)
- Scholarship (1)
- Science Fiction (1)
- Sexuality (1)
- Structural Oppression (1)
- Sweatshops (1)
- Tunnel of Oppression (2)
- Women's Leadership Training (1)
- Women's Studies (2)
Assignment Deadlines
- Event Analysis -- Feb. 14
- Grade Book -- March 4
- Discussion Group Leaflet/Event -- March 4
- Partner Plan --- March 25
- The Analysis of Everyday Life -- April 22
- Learning Analysis -- May 13
Blog Archive
Class Meetings
7 comments:
I was fairly surprised that these forms of art had only been noted nationally today. I expected there to be hundreds of exhibits like this on display already, so I was surprised these forms of art are fairly rare.
I believe that while both of these pieces of art are political as both pieces obviously carry a political statement. A woman's right over her body was the statement for the Yale student and negligence is horrible was the statement for the Starving Dog piece.
However, only the Yale student's project was justifiable. The miscarriages were faked and no life was directly harmed.
I believe that the Starving Dog piece was unjustifiable simply because it allowed torture of a living being for the purposes of art. In my opinion, art is supposed to transmit emotions and messages through mediums as long as the medium gives the artist their consent. Otherwise, the Holocaust can be seen as a work of art showing Aryan dominance.
Art really does not have restrictions so I believe that these artists do havea right to represent their art any way they want. However, I believe there choice of artwork is unethical and appalling. It is cruel for someone to torture an animal and it is immoral for a woman to continually induce miscarriages. These people do have a strange way of respresenting their art, and it does make them seem cruel, but they have the right to do this.
The examples of art that are presented here are a disgrace to humans and are unethical. While art is susposed to make humans think with emotion and its main purpose is to evoke feelings, these have gone over the limit. Personally I do not have any boudaries for art although when living creatures are killed it is seen not as art but as murder. I can not understand what would poses the artist to see that this type of work in either case would be accepted by society. Never would I have though art would go to such extremes but as to the question "what is art?" this in no way shape or form constitutes!
When i saw both of these articles i was shocked at both of these incidents. I think that if people call this art where a dog is dying or a women taking drugs to induce a miscarriage, then i think that there should be a limit. I think that the artist took it too far to try to prove a point. In a way it is political because it for example shows the injustices such as with the women having the miscarriage. I think that there should be some sort of limit beucase if not people will try to justify a killing someone as being art.
I look at the starving dog situation in a different way. Yes it's horrible, yes I would rather it not have been done... but if you read the artist's justification of it and if you think about how things were going to happen it may have done more good that harm.
The dog was going to die, he had a disease that was going to make it die soon. The humane thing would have been to put it down, but without the artist's intervention no one was going to pay for it to be put to sleep and it would have died on the street. By putting the dog's death on display he put an ugly truth in the publics face and made a lot of people aware of just how a lot of stray animals end up. It's a tough act to witness, and I'm not comfortable with it at all, but I was just trying to look at it from a different angle than what my gut reaction was.
The display of the dog was horrible. It was no excuse to say that it would have died anyway. It is not the artist's choice to make and it was genuiely disgusting. Art is such a subjective term, and i think that neither of these things qualify as art to me. They are statements, but not art.
I believe that art should have no boundaries when it comes to being acceptable. Art is a form of expression so who could someone say that you shouldn't be able to express yourself? However, the manner in which these people are expressing their emotions are somewhat cruel and immoral. I do believe that art should be freely expressed at all measure, however, when it begins to danger others this is intentional harm, not art.
Post a Comment