PATRICIA PICCININI is another sculptor that involves anthropomorphism, I find her work slightly more sickening, in the sense that she heavily hints at cross species breeding, as her sculptures are clearly hybrids of non human animals and humans. She makes these sculptures to tackle issues within medicine.
She uses occasional horse hair but no other animal parts. she still shocks and yet does not harm any animals.
I then moved on to look at ANTHROPOMORPHISM within art as a different way to onvolve animals in contemporary art.
Beth Cavener Stichter is one of my favourite sculptors, she uses no animal part within her sculpting, however her work is still shocking, yet beautiful, and highly delicate and detailed.
She works with anthropomorphism, a form of personification, a mixture of human and animal. She makes animals with human expressions and sometimes human genetalia. This gives us a sense of empathy with the animals when they are depicted in pain, as they are showed withi feelings we can see and therfore imagine and feel.
Also, i feel by using human genetalia on the animals, it brings an uncomfortable feeling with thoughts of hybrids and the inter species breeding.
Its a clever way to shock i feel, without using animals.
I then looked at Chris Ofili, who did not use animals within his art but animal feces, elephant feces to be precise, which again in this day and age is hardly shocking. He made it shocking by using it within a piece of art also featuring the virgin mary, he claimed to “bridge the sacred and the profane ” (ww.tate.org.uk/whats/on/tate-britain)
The work was called sick, even though no harm came to any animal.
This is what interested me, he managed to shock using animal materials, and yet no animals were harmed, but he still gained the exposure he wanted.
MARCO EVARISTTI created a piece called “Helena” 2000, where he displayed ten blenders all in working order, filled with water and a goldfish in each , no harm would come to the goldfish yet he invited the audience to press the on button. the museum director was charged and acquitted with cruelty to animals although no fish were harmed.
what if the audience had pressed the on button? would that over step the boundaries between art and murder?
I continued looking at artsists that shoc using animals within their art, even though the previous videos i had watched had made me feel quite sick and disgusted at human behaviour.
It made me question myself, I eat meat, i wear fur and leather, I shoot and go to hunts,and I have deers antlers on my bedroom walls. Is this any different to these artsists that I am questioning?!? I continue to think about this through out my research, knowing it will already have a huge influence on my work.
GUILLERMO VARGAS, born 1975in Costa Rica created a piece of performance art entitled “Exposicion no 1,” 2007. Vergas tied up an emaciated dog with “you are what you read” written in dog food on the wall with cociane and marijuana buring around it. There were rumour that the dog starved to death and some that he escaped. This piece obviously had many complaints, however Vergas did make the point that all of the viewers that passed through to see the work, not one of them fed the dog, or released it, so makes them no better than him tying it up, he called the audience hypocrits.
