As of posting this I just got back from the play “the shape of things” which my girlfriend and I hated until we saw it performed (it's true you can't take a play's transcript and judge it as the play). I liked the play because it brought up a lot of questions for me as an artist. In the play the main antagonist Evelyn modifies the main character through manipulation, making him a better person physically, a different person mentally, and then shatters his life by putting his transformation on display. Now it is easy to condemn Evelyn for doing this But I like being the devil's advocate, because it makes people think. So I will present my defense of Evelyn , not because I believe morally that she is right, but because I hope it will make you think.
Making people think is the point of art, it's why we constantly try to do the unexpected, why new mediums are adopted as art and why what was thought provoking years ago will not be anymore. So when does the line get crossed for art? This is difficult because artists are supposed to cross the line. The famous quote (of whom I forget the source) is that “it's not art until it pisses someone off” and as a society we are constantly becoming more open minded. This is a good thing because it allows us to know more about our world and make educated moral decisions. However where is the REAL line? Can you mess up someone's life forever in the name of art? Think of all the thought that the action alone will provoke in the person and all who view the work. Can you kill in the name of art? Can you condemn your or someone else's “soul” by proving that their entire life is built on ever moving sand, and then show them that there is a rock beneath? What if it makes people think? What if it causes epiphanies everywhere? It's easy to say that it's not worth it, but how many lives have we sacrificed in the name of science for the same purpose, or for politics? Can there be acceptable losses for art?
To complicate matters even further, what if these losses are a risk? What if there's a chance someone or something will be killed? A real life example of that is the piece by “Guillermo Vargas” an unpopular man with pita and other animal lovers because he starved a dog as art. However what if his purpose was to explore whether or not humans would do the right thing in the face of legal action? What if the exhibition was the piece? What if he hoped that someone would ignore his wishes, get up, dodge the guards and feed the dog? Even with the obvious consequences? People all signed petitions, hell I did too, but facebook petitions obviously do nothing, when anyone at the thing could have actually done something. And did it not make us think? Was the poor dog's potential death (it happened it's over, it died, so not really potential) worth it? I ask you this?
