animal art

the massachusets museum of contemporary art is hosting a display called "becoming animal: contemporary art in the animal kingdom" which is about blurring the line between (non-naked ape) animal and naked ape animal. (reviewed here) it is nice of them to follow up on my suggestion from several days ago that we put animals in art museums rather than just in natural history museums. it includes some creepy transgenic mice. patricia piccinnini has weird sculptures in which she combines human and animal forms to create new and crazy hybrids (like naked apes and dogs!). interestingly, a picture of one of her sculptures called "the young family," (seen here) which shows a dog-woman hybrid nursing her puppies/babies circulated around the internet as a hoax about a real hybrid created from genetic engineering. it's sad you naked apes so long to be like us that you must create urban legends to project your fantasies.

and williams college is hosting an exhibit called creature discomforts about the use of animals in naked ape art.

i think i would like these exhibits, though they seem more a projection of naked ape anxieties about your own actions. see, for instance, the proliferation of art in which animals are made from mechanical parts (the old cyborg) or the number of art pieces addressing genetic modification, or scientific discoveries that have demonstrated that in spite of your superiority complex, you naked apes are genetically quite similar to the "inferior" beasts.

and i'd like to give a plug for some real animal art made by chimps that is bringing in big bucks. the image of folks sitting around bidding thousands of pounds for ape art is a lovely moment of boundary crossing. the bbc article i liked also mentioned that the same auction included andy warhol's "piss paintings" in which he, um, invited his friends to piss on a canvas covered with copper paint. bring on the animal art!