never going to be popular, but possibly the only art that's going to change us

Too many people, I think, think that the purpose of art is to look pretty, and that things that are ugly and inhumane or really at their depths show us the ugly and profane and inhumanness of humanity are not art. I saw that there's a facebook group to protest an artist whose art installation was a sick, starving and dying dog tied to a gallery wall. Many people apparently claim that the dog did starve to death, but other reports are that the dog was merely a very ill looking stray, was fed regularly while the exhibition wasn't open and escaped back to the streets after a few days. Either way a lot of people claim that this isn't art, just some sick inhumane man getting sport off an animals suffering. Really? Didn't this man's turning a spotlight on the miserable lives of stray animals? Didn't it pose intriguing questions about the nature of people who view the suffering and obviously pitiable condition of a living thing which was less fortunate, not of their own caste (situation) and whose condition that they could at any time have done something to improve (untied the rope and removed the dog to food and a vet) but chose not to because their interest was only served to look and pity and never to act? That methaphorically that dog was not only a dog, but the poor, the ill, the disenfranchised, the persecuted in any society whose lives we could all easily improve and show compassion for, but don't because to take action we would have to act differently than the rest of the group?

And what of the people who sign these petitions decrying the artist, so maybe some of them donate a couple of bucks to a charity for strays in Central America, do any of them really get what the artist was saying, would they really care about the dog or other dogs like him if it weren't for this man's exhibit? Would they even know about the plight of strays in Central America in the first place? Would they have taken time to look for a charity to give to if not for the way that this exhibit provoked them and challenged them to look outside their idea that somehow everyone on earth cared enough about stray dogs to save them from conditions that were deplorable?

The point of art is to challenge our notions, to give us sometimes surprising insights into things we over-looked or took for granted about things. It's to affect us in some way and say something. It is not merely to look pretty and show us the good and beautiful things. Personally I am absolutely convinced that this man's work is a piece of art. If it horrifying and ugly and repellent? Sure. Of course it is, but so is the fact that everyday millions of dogs and cats live that horrible existence and no one even looks at them let alone tries to save them. Here is a man who says, hey, don't ignore this dog, see how he is suffering. (though I do seriously hope that the reports that the dog was fed when the gallery was closed are true, sometimes you don't need the utmost of reality to get your point across.) Plus, Animal Planet makes a pretty penny in advertising $ with all their Animal Cops shows where viewers just sit and watch images of horrible animal cruelty so that they can get a jolt from saying how much they can't believe anyone could treat an animal like that and sometimes get a cathartic release seeing the person responsible arrested. It's not quite the same as standing there watching a dog suffer, but it's still a voyeuristic and somewhat sick form of entertainment.

In the end the ugly, nasty, and confrontation provoking art is probably the only art that has the power to change the world. We fight over its right to exist at all and yet we're never going to save ourselves and others from looking at a bowl of fruit and some flowers.

Fragments and details (part one)

Sometimes I think I spend more time worrying over the content of my sidebar than over the content in my actual entries, well no more, I think I've got it down now.

Friday was the opening of Fragments and Details; the bitter and the sweet at the Bemis Underground and I was quite pleasantly surprised by it, not only because I've been very under-impressed with most of the shows in the BU's short history, but because it was unlike what I would expect from Orand given the content of his thesis show last spring and because it really showed a vast improvement in execution.

(This blog doesn't go back far enough for an account of the thesis shows, but allow for this slight summary. Walker's was quite unmemorable, in fact I was only able to determine which pieces were his by process of which ones they weren't in thinking back over the Spring BFA show, though to be fair I was thoroughly not excited by that whole BFA class. Orand's was probably the most ambitious and interesting in concept, mostly video installations dealing with marketing and consumer culture exhibited in a declining shopping mall. The biggest issue for me with his thesis is that while he had a concept and a really decent piece or two, there was a total lack of actual interaction with the space in which it was installed and the space had an effect of making the viewer think 'is this all?' There was also an interesting incident at his thesis talk where he made comments to the effect of digital mediums are what art is now and everyone else was just making crafts, which I didn't hear first hand, but only in the recounting of the talk from the professor who had argued with him about the comments)

Given the installations in Orand's previous show and the alleged comments, I was really not expecting to walk down the stairs into the gallery to find a show devoid of video installations (the closest being a tv under a desk buried by a mountain of discarded clothes playing a calming blizzard of white noise snow and another piece projecting a vintage photograph of a man onto a battered rusting screendoor, very analog indeed) So I'm rather inclined to attribute the pieces in the show to Walker's aesthetic, but I really wish there was a show catalog to give me both names of the pieces and whose they are, somehow I can't imagine that every piece was a collaboration.

I always write about shows in my notebook before I start trying to write about them online, it helps me think and distill what I liked and didn't and what I've learned from an artist's standpoint from going to a show, but I've had to try to stop myself from writing about this one, it's like verbal dysentery because the longer I examine the show or its pieces the more totally confused I become about what the intentions were and whether it's good. In a way I think that that alone makes it a success, after all art is supposed to make you think even if it wasn't meant to make you ponder whether the sheer amount of contrivance and heavy-handedness in a good number of the installations was an almost Brechtian device or just the work of a pair of artists who are far too caught up in art-theory.

Overall I thought the leaps and bounds made in really considering how the environment of the gallery affects the experience of seeing the piece demonstrated the growth of both Walker and Orand as artists. While my own inner debate about how I personally interacted with each piece has sort of made me unable to decide whether they lived up to their concept or intent, I was rather taken by a few of the pieces and I think they did a bang up job creating an ambiance and a mood throughout the entire galleryspace. (I'll probably give a more indepth critique of individual pieces another day, I forgot to bring my camera with me to the gallery, so I don't have any photos, which I'd like to illustrate what I mean, so it shall have to wait)

So, if you're in the Omaha area, I suggest catching the show which runs until the 22nd 11am-5pm on fridays and saturdays (I think I'll be stopping by tomorrow with my camera. Also tomorrow is the opening of this semester's BFA Thesis show, which I'm expecting to be good (of course my friend Frances is Thesising so I'm excited for her).