Is this art or abuse?

[Seggybop]

That sort of boils down to the original point of whether or not "skill" is a valid part of defining art. If something still requires a degree of talent to perform then it can be considered art, albeit highly repugnant and repulsive. What the fuckass in the OP did was nothing that required any form of talent whatsoever.

I think it's reasonable to say that skill is not required to produce art-- if you lack skill, it will be bad art, but art nonetheless. Sucky art sucks but is still art. Drawings made by kindergarteners are still art despite the lack of any technical skill. You need some kind of further ability if you want to create art that will be appreciated by someone other than your mother, though. So I'd still maintain that this idiot created (horrible and stupid) art.

[fusion]

I should rephrase what I said: It is horrible to do such thing to anyone or anything, but it is part of life in one way or another.

So my question is that: Would you rather have this hidden away so that it never reached your ears?

Sure the dog should have been taken in and bathe and fed, but the point the sick dude is making is that stuff happens. Sure there is much more elegant ways to make the same point across to the public, but he would had never got the same amount of media attention as he is getting now. The dude probably knows that what he is doing is wrong but he just does it anyways because of the attention.

I did not refute that person was not a sicko or what he did was wrong. I was trying to point out that this can be view as art as different points of view can and will vary from person to person.

I know that I have touched on a sore spot but sometimes having an ability to see both sides of the argument is good thing to have.

Another question: What makes it more acceptable to starve a pigeon or a rabbit (in Australia once upon a time), but not a dog?

I will leave it as this...

[Master of Ossus]

If we can look at the bigger picture here, you basically have a guy who is putting his cruelty and sadism on display. I don't approve of this, and it seems that 99% of the people here don't either. Art or not, this is a man who is acting out his sick and disgusting impulses.

Seriously. Why didn't anyone help the dog? Also, why don't we chain moronic artists like this up without food or water and watch them die of starvation? That would be a much better art exhibit. Sort of like the hunger strikes, but without the electrolyte fluids to keep them alive.

[fusion]

Sure this is disturbing but it is still an art in one way or another.

Prove it. Or take your worthless one-liner and kindly shove it up your ass, please.

Art defined as:The term art is used to describe a particular type of creative production generated by human beings, and the term usually implies some degree of aesthetic value. An artist makes a work of art for various purposes, such as creating an experience for others or as part of a ritual. ... (wiki)

and

the products of human creativity (Princeton).

One might say that it takes no creativity to tie a dog to a chain and leave it there. However, it does take creativity to think of this idea up in the first place. So yes this is horribly weak argument but I am trying to say that the the sick dude has grounds to base his claims on.

So if you don't like this argument, please do shove it up my ass

[fusion]

If we can look at the bigger picture here, you basically have a guy who is putting his cruelty and sadism on display. I don't approve of this, and it seems that 99% of the people here don't either. Art or not, this is a man who is acting out his sick and disgusting impulses.

Seriously. Why didn't anyone help the dog? Also, why don't we chain moronic artists like this up without food or water and watch them die of starvation? That would be a much better art exhibit. Sort of like the hunger strikes, but without the electrolyte fluids to keep them alive.

There is countries in this world where dogs are consider as something that is not welcomed. Also may people forget that in third world countries, people don't care as much because they don't have as much time to think about it.

Sorry for the double post...

[General Zod]

Art defined as:The term art is used to describe a particular type of creative production generated by human beings, and the term usually implies some degree of aesthetic value. An artist makes a work of art for various purposes, such as creating an experience for others or as part of a ritual. ... (wiki)

You're using wiki as a source? Honestly.

One might say that it takes no creativity to tie a dog to a chain and leave it there. However, it does take creativity to think of this idea up in the first place. So yes this is horribly weak argument but I am trying to say that the the sick dude has grounds to base his claims on.

That's quite possibly the single most retarded argument I've seen all week. Why the fuck does he have to have grounds for his idiotic claims at all? Or did it not occur to you that he has absolutely none? By your asinine logic smearing feces is on a wall is "art" because it takes 'creativity' to think it up.

[Master of Ossus]

There is countries in this world where dogs are consider as something that is not welcomed.

I don't consider rats welcome in my garage, but that doesn't mean that I cage them up and display them as they waste away slowly of starvation.

Also may people forget that in third world countries, people don't care as much because they don't have as much time to think about it.

Sorry for the double post...

I can understand why people wouldn't care as much about suffering in other countries (after all, in the US we ignore PEOPLE who are starving to death in other countries), but that doesn't make it right to deliberately starve and display animals in such a condition.

[Knife]

Gag, this artist is nothing of the sort. He's a sadist and a sick fuck who needs a shrink and a jail cell. ArcturusMengsk's verbose bullshit aside, I see we're in yet another 'what is art' loops.

Why do we always go through this bullshit. Nobody ever drops a pan on the floor and calls it music and if they did, you'd have very few people defending him. Nobody goes on TV and picks his nose, then laughs hysterically and calls it comedy, nor does anyone defend it as such.

Why is it 'art' and usually and specifically visual are like sculpting and painting that gets this curious latitude in definitions? And yet, predictably, when bullshit like this pops up, lots of people get in silly debates about it and define and redifine 'art' so match their perceptions.

I can go so far as to agree with he who said that you could define it as 'anything you convince people to think that it is' and thus give it value. That's pretty much 'subjective' in long form, but when your dealing with such a vague thing, why not kick it up a notch and start calling shit 'good art' or 'bad art' because with such broad and vague bullshit, you need a better distinction.

When you have to beat people over the head for them to get your meaning, or if you have to describe it in detail for people to get your meaning....its bad art.

[rhoenix]

When you have to beat people over the head for them to get your meaning, or if you have to describe it in detail for people to get your meaning....its bad art.

That's still being overly generous, in my view.

[Covenant]

When you have to beat people over the head for them to get your meaning, or if you have to describe it in detail for people to get your meaning....its bad art.

That's the real heart of what I was saying. Art isn't different than music or, like, a speech. Art is like making a verbal statement. If nobody understands what you're saying with it, or sure you're saying anything at all, it's probably not art and is certainly not good. Appealing to comprehensibility is not an appeal to popularity.

[salm]

Which is why I say my definition holds more water than most. A forest is a forest. A forest isn't abstracted and isn't symbolic. It is a forest. Nobody planted the forest in order to make you feel something. It just is there. The meaning of a forest is "I am a forest." That's not art.

I know what you mean but mean and think it´s right but it´s not a rational statement. We simply state that this is what we think is art and then operate from there. We still have to acknolage that the basic definition of art is highly subjective and people can argue just anything to be art. I guess this is really one of the best cases where the old saying works "I know if it´s art when i see it".

If you take a forest and cut it up into wood, and arranged the planks into the shapes of trees, that could be art. If you turned it into a woodcarving of a tree, that could be art. Or if you took a picture of the forest, that could be art. But that's the abstracted forest. You gotta be able to 'put a frame' around it first--and go through the process, then, of giving it a meaning.

OK, something having to go through a process by an artist or maybe even only an idea is required for something to be art. That sounds good.
I´d say that the meaning is not necessarily required though as there is art out there where the process itself is considered the art.

Well, if you don't have a rational response, you should try to think it through more. People have said "I don't think this" and "I don't believe that" about a lot of stuff, and it doesn't mean it's right. Just like Mengsk doesn't believe in Morals, and the rest of us believe in science that tells us those are signs of a diseased brain, someone's personal view on the world is not always the final authority. Man's urge to make art is so old I bet there's a quantifiable biological component, just like our idea of a 'feminine' form being based on biological cues.

Well i´ve been thinking this through for a while (not just since yesterday) and have pretty much come to the conclusion that there is no rational way to say that art can´t be defined as anything. And this is exactly what i mean. You are basically saying "I don´t think this" and "I don´t believe this" when you´re stating that the rainforest is no piece of art in itself.

Art isn't an appeal to authority. Art, as a term, shouldn't be democratic. I would say that artfulness is something different than expression or beauty and is a quality held by things that interact with the audience. If people only like the canvas because they don't want to be seen as morons, then that's a social experiment and not art.

Penn and Teller did a nice Bullshit! episode about this, where they fed people awful food in a fancy resturant and had them saying how much they loved it, and how they could taste the quality. You can objectively rate the qualities of food and say "This is better prepared than this, this is bland, and this is not a good wine." People might be tricked into convincing themselves otherwise, but there is still an objective interaction. What happens too much is a person buying art because of the artist's name, not because of what's on it. That's just business. People like to sell art. Do you think a baseball is worth anything? People buy them though, knowing someone else will buy it for more.

I'm not saying that art is better if people like it. I'm saying that artfulness is a quality in the thing that makes people go "Hey, I like that" or "That reminds me of..." or something, rather than pass by. If I gave you five large stones, and told you to arrange them in such a way as to garner the most interest, reflection, and debate about the meaning then we could gauge what's more artful. We shouldn't base someone being good or bad 'art' based on how people like it or want to buy it. That's a job for Aesthetics debate, not the defining of art as a broad term.

The whole bolded part seems to contradice the two paragraphs before. If it requires people to go "Hey" to be art then it is an appeal to popularity.
The arrengement of stones to get the most attention is pretty much a text book example for an appeal to popularity. I mean according to that if no one goes "hey" then it´s not art, so in order to aquire the quality "artfulness" it requires someone to notice it. How is this not an appeal to popularity?

I love abstract art, and consider it one of the most pure forms of art! It's a little dense, but you just need to understand the visual 'language,' essentially. Once you do you're able to enjoy it quite a bit.

Well, no argument here.

[salm]

If you don't have a definition of what makes something art, then why should I listen to you proclaiming something as such, or bother to disprove it as art if you can't explain why it is in the first place?

I told you from the beginning that i think that anything can be art. I don´t really know why you´re acting up as if this was something new to you.
I don´t give a rats ass if you listen to me "proclaim something as such", and i didn´t ask you to listen either. You started reacting to my statements not the other way round, so quit acting like it was.

[CJvR]

Don't be stupid--symbolic speech is protected in the US, but hurting a dog wouldn't qualify. The only one who thinks this is art is Megnsk. Some fucking nutjob who kills an animal and calls it "art" isn't an artist. It's a slander to say the rest of the art community would accept him.

Oh I think there are many who think it is art, otherwise someone would have let the poor dog live. There are loads of weird shit that would be criminal if it wasn't called art.

Building a huge wooden building in a national park.
Building a rock and concrete bunker in the same park and calling it a book.
Puting goldfishes in plugged in blenders.
Hiring prostitutes for sex, recording it and showing it as "art".
Pretending to be a dog and biting people...
Photo exhibit that would have landed the artist in jail for violation of the pedophilia laws if it wasn't "art"...

[ArcturusMengsk]

• Objective harm and suffering are generally detrimental to the well-being of living creatures

And?

[*]Because they are detrimental, they are bad

And?

[*]Therefore, aside from necessity (such as a predator killing and eating its prey), actions that cause objective harm and suffering are bad

And?

[*]Conversely, actions that alleviate objective harm and suffering are beneficial and thus desirable and can be determined good.

And?

[*]In this case, there is no objective benefit whatsoever from the actions of that piece of shit and clearly obvious objective harm and suffering caused by them

And?

[*]Therefore his actions have no value whatsoever, unless that value is considered negative[/list]

And?

We have, for twenty-five centuries, become so accustomed to equating what is harmful with what is wrong, bad, ugly and stupid that one cannot today even speak of pain without invoking a knee-jerk moralism from most individuals. These are generally the same individuals who have been so conditioned by society that they genuinely believe in their own pedantic bullshit about "making the world a better place" by means of - of what? - of moralization.

Whence did this inversion of values come from? Three millenia of slave-rule. The ancient Stoics openly embraced pain, including externally-inflicted injury, as a model of character development according to the Stoa. Heraclitus of Ephesus was a warmonger of the first rank. Even Plato, half-fictitious proto-Christian that he was, openly espoused a radically hierarchical rank-system in his Republic. And yet merely because it provides for 'social cohesion', for 'social benefit', and ultimately for the socialization of the individual, we ought to embrace restraint?

Man does not progress. We are worth no more today than the Roman; individually we are probably a great deal less valuable in the scheme of things than the Roman, who objectively had no conscience. To medicalize this is to inject a value-biased and slanderously Christian spirit into the scientific realm; it is to say that individuals ought to be sociable creatures, upon the basis of - of what? once more - their 'inner value.

I don't care how you classify me. At least I've not bought into the objective validity of my own 'warm feelings'.

[Rye]

I think it may count as art as it can be equivalent to a text, e.g. "I starved a dog to death to get a reaction and took photos" instead of "a portrait of the mona lisa," but it's clear this sort of art should incur legal retribution lest it encourage others to use artistic expression as a loophole to cruelty laws, as well as punish the guy for being cruel to a dog for the most threadbare of reasons.

Blending goldfish and biting people may be "art" after a fashion, but I don't see any reason to treat them as legal pursuits.

[Glass Pearl Player]

[...] but the point the sick dude is making is that stuff happens.

I beg to differ, that is exactly not the point this dude is trying to make. Were it so, he could have taken photos of a starving dog, putting them on display and thus expressing: "Stuff like this dog starving happens (and you can't do anything about it after the fact)." He could have done that, but didn't.

The point is: "Stuff like a guy chaining up a dog and letting it starve is allowed to happen, not by some sick fucked-up bastard, but by you, esteemed visitor of this exhibit (but I can't quite tell the difference yet)."

Yes, the guy let the dog starve. But the same has to be said about all the visitors and the organizers of the exhibit. They let the dog starve too, by not taking any action. The linked article labels the death of the poor dog as preventable, which is obviously true - it can't be too hard to bring in a bowl and a can of dog food. Why did nobody do it then, if it was easy, affordable and the right thing to do?

Because none of those bastards cared enough, thats why. The artist asked them not to feed the dog, and despite he fact that it was obviously starving, they complied. They put the liberty of art above their morals.

The message I am extracting from this event: The sad news is not that this action was attempted, it is that it met with success.

[Molyneux]

*snip fuckheaded, obtuse rant*

So...you're essentially saying that you're the smartest person in the past twenty-five centuries, and that you're the only person to understand the Meaning of Life(tm).

Pardon me for failing to see you as anything but a puffed-up, arrogant little snotball with, most likely, little to no life experience and few to no friends.

[General Zod]

I told you from the beginning that i think that anything can be art. I don´t really know why you´re acting up as if this was something new to you.
I don´t give a rats ass if you listen to me "proclaim something as such", and i didn´t ask you to listen either. You started reacting to my statements not the other way round, so quit acting like it was.

I'll rephrase myself. How about you come up with a meaningful definition of what can be considered art before you go around demanding people disprove that it isn't? Otherwise you'll just keep shifting the fucking goalposts because you have no fixed definition of it. If you aren't willing to put up that much effort then I can just as easily say it isn't art with as much proof as you've bothered putting forth that it is.

[Edi]

We have, for twenty-five centuries, become so accustomed to equating what is harmful with what is wrong, bad, ugly and stupid that one cannot today even speak of pain without invoking a knee-jerk moralism from most individuals.

What's your point here or are you just blowing hot air as usual? Also, care to point out what the problem is with deeming harm and pain undesirable and wrong? Shouldn't be too difficult, as you so obviously seem to have a different viewpoint to that.

These are generally the same individuals who have been so conditioned by society that they genuinely believe in their own pedantic bullshit about "making the world a better place" by means of - of what? - of moralization.

Hasty generalization and unsupported claim. Par for the course for you. Too bad that it will not let you slip from the burden of proof of your claim. You also seem to think that pointing out things that are wrong or causing problems is somehow being moralizing or otherwise undesirable even if one can't directly do something. Should I take it that you lump me in as one of those moralizers?

Whence did this inversion of values come from?

What inversion of values?

Three millenia of slave-rule. The ancient Stoics openly embraced pain, including externally-inflicted injury, as a model of character development according to the Stoa.

So, the ancient Stoics were people who enjoyed pain and thought the suffering engendered by that would be character-building? Seems like they were a pretty fucking stupid lot and besides that, appeals to authority don't cut it here. We all develop some character when we grow up and learn to deal with the injuries and hurts that come as part and parcel with that, but seeking out and embracing pain? That's just plain moronic and usually indicates something out of balance in a person's mind.

Heraclitus of Ephesus was a warmonger of the first rank. Even Plato, half-fictitious proto-Christian that he was, openly espoused a radically hierarchical rank-system in his Republic.

Both of them were the products of their own time, but what the fuck is the relevance here? Besides your normal appeal to authority, of course. It's also worth noting that our society is still fairly hierarchical, as most societies always have been. The Christian church is actually by and large far more hierarchical than the rest of society, so if you were entertaining some delusions about Christianity or proto-Christianity necessarily leading to any kind of egalitarian society, those were just that, delusions.

And yet merely because it provides for 'social cohesion', for 'social benefit', and ultimately for the socialization of the individual, we ought to embrace restraint?

Yes! Or do you have a better idea? I happen to have this idea that if we did indeed live in a society that did not adhere to restraint, you would not last for long. And I can't say that it would really be anyone's loss.

Man does not progress. We are worth no more today than the Roman; individually we are probably a great deal less valuable in the scheme of things than the Roman, who objectively had no conscience. To medicalize this is to inject a value-biased and slanderously Christian spirit into the scientific realm; it is to say that individuals ought to be sociable creatures, upon the basis of - of what? once more - their 'inner value.

On the basis of our evolution, you fuckwit. We evolved as social animals, pack creatures. Without those social groups, we would not have lasted long. The success of our society comes from cooperation of the pack at the end of the day, and in the pack you look out for each oher and you do not harm members of the pack. You do and you get punished or even cast out. The problem is that our current society is far larger than a pack of a few dozen members, but the basic premise is the same thing, you blithering moron.

I don't care how you classify me. At least I've not bought into the objective validity of my own 'warm feelings'.

You really are too stupid to actually see the reasoning behind my argument? The reasons why were spelled out quite clearly. Your incomprehension is not my problem.

[Master of Ossus]

We have, for twenty-five centuries, become so accustomed to equating what is harmful with what is wrong, bad, ugly and stupid that one cannot today even speak of pain without invoking a knee-jerk moralism from most individuals.

Bullshit. People go through "character building pain" every time they step onto a football field. What people object to is deliberately subjecting others to pain over which those others have no control.

These are generally the same individuals who have been so conditioned by society that they genuinely believe in their own pedantic bullshit about "making the world a better place" by means of - of what? - of moralization.

Wow. What a concept you've discovered.

Whence did this inversion of values come from?

What inversion of social values? It's not as if the Egyptians went around torturing themselves for the hell of it.

Three millenia of slave-rule. The ancient Stoics openly embraced pain, including externally-inflicted injury, as a model of character development according to the Stoa.

People do this today, too: see football fields, marathon runners, etc. etc. etc.--this does not justify allowing someone to torture an animal to death.

Heraclitus of Ephesus was a warmonger of the first rank. Even Plato, half-fictitious proto-Christian that he was, openly espoused a radically hierarchical rank-system in his Republic. And yet merely because it provides for 'social cohesion', for 'social benefit', and ultimately for the socialization of the individual, we ought to embrace restraint?

This entire paragraph is an appeal to authority, but it's not even an appeal with any sort of validity. Nothing in Republic espoused deliberately harming others for the hell of it or as "art" or anything else, which is the point of this thread. I suppose the way that you're arguing your opponents are advocating (social) restraint while simultaneously lauding the physical restraint of an animal to the point where the thing dies should be ironic, but really it's just pathetic. First of all, social cohesion and benefit can be used as the basis for a system of morality, but even the most anarchistic philosopher understood the need for SOME rules of social conduct while in the public sphere that were designed to prevent people from interfering with one another.

Man does not progress. We are worth no more today than the Roman; individually we are probably a great deal less valuable in the scheme of things than the Roman, who objectively had no conscience.

Right, because no Romans ever had a sense of right and wrong.

To medicalize this is to inject a value-biased and slanderously Christian spirit into the scientific realm; it is to say that individuals ought to be sociable creatures, upon the basis of - of what? once more - their 'inner value.

Uh, Christia0ns have historically valued suffering a great deal. Surely you remember the whole "crucifixion" thing, not to mention the constant Biblical reminders of sacrifice, the value they place on martyrs, etc. You seem to be completely and utterly confused, which probably explains why your entire post is one giant mass of incoherent gibberish. This sort of post may impress the fifth graders in the school yard, but since you obviously have no sense of the history of thought to which you regularly allude it appears pretentious and obnoxious to people who actually know what they're talking about.

I don't care how you classify me. At least I've not bought into the objective validity of my own 'warm feelings'.

Clearly not. You have deliberately stripped yourself of a social conscience, but you have made no effort to challenge your own assumption that such a conscience is damaging to you. This is actually a fairly common thing for pre-teens and young teens to do, so you're hardly unique, but when you grow the fuck up you'll understand why the development of a conscience is viewed as an empowering and rewarding part of one's emotional and intellectual development.

[Lord Poe]

Furthermore, it was necessary in the same way that all art, all action, is necessary: to express a particular feeling or sentiment which arises within the individual. It was necessary to him: thus I can affirm it.

So the next serial killer like Ed Gein, who would make soup bowls from people craniums, lampshades from skin, etc. was an artiste? Should he have been cleared of all murder charges and given a grant instead?

I'm sick to fucking death of "free thinkers" that want to justify every foible as "art". You may want to delude yourselves into thinking you are on a higher intellectual plane than "the rest of us", but really, you're just fucking idiots.

Hey, how about we have someone squish the heads of baby chickens with a pair of pliers? Let's golf clap at this artist's bravery!

[Kamakazie Sith]

It's amusing when people appeal to ancient cultures as a means of justifying their belief system. I don't know where this line of thinking came from that pretends that ancient cultures were more evolved or more advanced in some way than modern cultures.

[Darth Wong]

Don't bother arguing with this shithead. Whenever he involves himself in any ethical debate, he reveals that his entire concept of ethics is to simply challenge the supporting premises behind everyone else's concept of ethics, without providing any competing ethical philosophy of his own or rationale for judging the validity or effectiveness of any ethical system.

In other words, his argument lives in the gaps; it is the ethicist's equivalent of Intelligent Design bullshit.

[Covenant]

Heraclitus of Ephesus was a warmonger of the first rank. Even Plato, half-fictitious proto-Christian that he was, openly espoused a radically hierarchical rank-system in his Republic. And yet merely because it provides for 'social cohesion', for 'social benefit', and ultimately for the socialization of the individual, we ought to embrace restraint?

This entire paragraph is an appeal to authority, but it's not even an appeal with any sort of validity. Nothing in Republic espoused deliberately harming others for the hell of it or as "art" or anything else, which is the point of this thread. I suppose the way that you're arguing your opponents are advocating (social) restraint while simultaneously lauding the physical restraint of an animal to the point where the thing dies should be ironic, but really it's just pathetic. First of all, social cohesion and benefit can be used as the basis for a system of morality, but even the most anarchistic philosopher understood the need for SOME rules of social conduct while in the public sphere that were designed to prevent people from interfering with one another.

You misread--he's not a fan of Plato. He's saying "Why should we buy into a system of restraint, merely for social order, just because Plato told us to?"

The short answer would just be "Yes, you out to embrace restraint for the sake of social order." When the restraint required is so light and the benefits of social cohesion so great, there's no reason not to. The restriction on killing an animal can be considered an ethical and utilitarian wrong even if you throw out any kinds of morality systems. You can only embrace a system of complete lack of restraint by also throwing any variety of ethic and value systems out the window too. Whatever's left is the kind of Anarchy even our Randroid wouldn't like. It's just philosophical masturbation.

[General Zod]

You misread--he's not a fan of Plato. He's saying "Why should we buy into a system of restraint, merely for social order, just because Plato told us to?"

Who gives a shit whether he's a fan of Plato or not? His entire claim is based purely on a false premise. He doesn't attempt to explain why social cohesion or restraint are bad and expects everyone else to do the work for him.