A Danish court has ruled that an art display which invited the public to put live goldfish through a food blender did not constitute cruelty to animals.
The Trapholt Art Museum near Copenhagen displayed an exhibit of goldfish swimming in 10 blenders, with visitors being told they could press the "on" button if they wanted. At least one visitor did, killing two goldfish.
The Chilean-born Danish artist who created the 'piece', Marco Evaristti, was apparently "trying to test visitors' sense of right and wrong". He said he wanted to force people to "do battle with their conscience". The idea was to "place people before a dilemma: to choose between life and death."
When the director of the art museum was fined for cruelty to animals after complaints from campaign group Friends of Animals, he refused to pay and was taken before the courts.
'Expert witnessess' including a vet and a representative from the blender manufacturer testified that the fish would have died instantly, painlessly and 'humanely'. The judge therefore ruled in favour of the art museum on the basis that the fish had not faced prolonged suffering.
It's An Outrage!!
The fact that two goldfish died in a blender is almost irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. What riles me far more is the fact that yet another looper has pulled together something from his deranged mind and managed to pass it off as Art (with a capital A!), and that another looper has then thought it acceptable to put it on display!!
There seems to be a real fear within the intellectual and artistic community of turning round and saying "Well, that's just crap, you're an idiot, take yourself away."
First Damien Hirst's calf in formaldehyde, then Tracey Emmins' unmade bed (complete with with skid-marked sheets, used condoms, and soiled knickers) and now fish in a blender; and these are just the ones we've heard of! No doubt somewhere a skinny, sunken eyed, pasty skinned, unshaven 'artist' with a tortured soul and knitted hat is eating a big hot curry, shitting onto a canvas and calling it an insight to the frailty and existentionalism of man. It'll get entered into the Turner Prize and sold for £££ (or more likely $$$!).
Rodan, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Turner, Van Gogh, Renoir, Monet etc, etc; that's art, and let the latterday wannabees call me a philistine for saying so. But to quote Al Capp, "[Abstract art is] a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered."
There are two saving graces of the fish farce; one is that it didn't go on display in this country, and the second is that we didn't have to pay for the court case!
