“Tell me what you eat,” said the French gastronomist Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, “and I will tell you what you are.”  This may hold true with food, but what about other kinds of nourishment?  For instance, would “You are what you read” hold true as well?  Last year, there was an exhibition in Nicaragua by an established Costa Rican artist named Guillermo Vargas that involved, according to many accounts, the death by starvation of a stray dog.  As part of the installation, the artist had supposedly captured the starving, sick dog in a poor Nicaraguan neighborhood and subsequently tied it to a short line in a corner of the gallery.  Search for his name on the internet if you dare, and you can see the pictures for yourself.  Assuming the worst, that the dog was starved to death, could this be seen as art or just a horrific attempt at gaining attention?  Why does this question matter?  It has to do with the definition of “art” versus “something other than art.”  Many people might like to summarily dismiss Vargas’ exhibit as sheer “publicity stunt,” but that seems much too easy.

In Berlin, in 1828, Hegel gave his famous lecture on aesthetics in which he noted the ever-widening gap between art and life. Fast forward 136 years to when Warhol exhibited his Brillo Boxes blurring (possibly forever) the line between art and life.  Since it has been declared that anything is permissible as art, it is up to the viewer to decide where the line is, if any, between art and not art – or can that line ever be redrawn?

Many artists would argue that anything the artist intends to be art is indeed art.  Intentionality is everything when it comes to art, and it has been that way since Duchamp’s Fountain.  Certainly art can be ugly and perhaps even something that many would feel is not morally “right.”  After all, who is to say something is or is not moral in the first place?  Art is not always easy to look at, and some of the greatest art challenges us to look closely despite the cruel, grotesque, or upsetting imagery we may encounter.  In the 21st century, artists not only consistently push the boundaries of what can be considered art, they also, sometimes forcefully, cause viewers to question the very validity of what is being done.  Vargas is not the first artist to prompt so many people to wonder “is this art?” or “is this right?”  The best performance artists are very adept at this.

French performance artist Orlan is in the midst of an ongoing process to transform herself into a Saint (Saint Orlan) through a series of hundreds of plastic surgery procedures.  Marina Abramovic once chopped off all her hair and nails during a performance and lay down in the center of a burning five-pointed star, almost asphyxiating herself as she waited patiently for the fire to consume all the oxygen and take her into a state of unconsciousness.  In 1971, Chris Burden had a friend shoot him in the arm with a .22, and in 1974 he had himself nailed, crucifixion style, to the back of a VW Beetle – both as part of performance pieces.  German artist Gregor Schneider is currently planning to exhibit what he calls the “ultimate” performance piece: someone dying.  The point is that the body is the ultimate object for artists to utilize to make whatever statement they are trying to make.  Like it or not, we are in an age where this kind of thing is going to constantly come up.

Is Vargas’ performance piece (and that is what I think it was, even though he used a surrogate body in the form of the dog) good art?  People are talking about it almost a year later, and something like this has never been done before in a gallery setting.  Historically, we tend to value artists who take chances and push the notion of art in a different direction.  This is where the whole concept of the “avant-garde” comes from.  These two aspects, along with the fact that he INTENDED it to be art, should make it art, right?  At least these are some of the considerations that are commonly used to place things in the realm of “art.”

The name of the exhibit was “You Are What You Read.”  Considering what has happened since the exhibition, the title is very telling.  As suggested previously, do an internet search for Guillermo Vargas and see what you find.  There are reports that the dog was tied up on a short leash to the wall of the gallery and starved to death during the exhibit.  There are pictures of the dog tied up in a gallery corner.  However, there are also reports that the dog was fed by the artist and escaped one day after capture.  So, unless one were actually there, we don’t really know what happened.  Those who want to think the worst will think the worst, and those who want to believe that nobody would actually do this to a dog in the name of art will believe the dog well taken care of and free.  In the end, we will think what we want to think, and our evaluation of this piece will be based upon what we have read about it.

It may be a truism, but it bears repeating: with the powerful reach of the internet connecting us all in seconds, we have to be careful about the things we read and see on the web.  At its heart, this may have been the point of the exhibit.  If we are what we read, and what we read is not accurate, what does that say about who we really are?  On the internet, it can be nearly impossible to tell what is true and what is not since almost anything can be made-up, faked or Photoshopped.  Sitting in front of our computer screens, we cannot utilize the instincts that took us generations to hone.  We are left to rely on what we think is possible or impossible based on our preconceived ideas about people and their capabilities. Unfortunately, the longer we live and the more we find out about what horrible things people are capable of, the more we may tend to believe the worst when encountering stories like Vargas’ exhibition.

True artistic innovation and inspiration can happen when artists test the historical and sometimes arbitrary limits that have been set to define what art is and can be.  When faced with the difficult decision of trying to figure out what an exhibition like Vargas’ is saying to us, we have to ask ourselves what is more dangerous: pushing the limits of art too far, or believing that there are limits beyond which artists must not trespass.