"Artist" Tortures Dog in Costa Rican Gallery

Agustin Blazquez, our favorite Cuban-American documentary filmmaker (also a painter), sent us this item :

Please sign and crosspost to everyone you know. Not just rescuers. Send to friends and family, too.

This is a very serious matter...

In 2007, the 'artist' Guillermo Vargas Habacuc, took a dog from the street, tied him to a rope in an art gallery, and starved him to death.

For several days, the 'artist' and the visitors of the exhibition have watched emotionless the shameful 'masterpiece' based on the dog's agony, until eventually he died.

Does it look like art to you?

But this is not all... the prestigious Visual Arts Biennial of the Central America decided that the 'installation' was actually art, so that Guillermo Vargas Habacuc has been invited to repeat his cruel action for the biennial of 2008.

PLEASE HELP STOP HIM.

http://www.petitiononline.com/ea6gk/petition.html

Please read to the end of this....He has been INVITED to do this again THIS year.

Note: He paid five local children to help him catch the terrified stray dog...in the impoverished area. The dog had no way to escape capture or his fate once he was in the hands of this cruel maniac.

But this is not all... the prestigious Visual Arts Biennial of the Central American decided that the 'installation' was actually art, so that Guillermo Vargas Habacuc has been invited to repeat his cruel action for the biennial of 2008.

PLEASE HELP STOP HIM.

http://www.petitiononline.com/ea6gk/petition.html


Besides signing the petition, please also write or e-mail the gallery that will host the 2008 exhibition to ask them to prohibit him. We can also write to other galleries that carry his other works and ask them to boycott him. Here's some addresses:

(1) EXHIBITION IS TAKING PLACE AT:

info@madc.ac.cr

Centro Nacional de la Cultura
Antigua Fábrica Nacional de Licores.
Avenida 3, calle 15/17. San José, Costa Rica.
Teléfono: (506) 257 7202 / 257 9370
Fax: (506) 257 8702


(2) ANOTHER GALLERY SHOWING HIS WORK:
This is the email address to a gallery which currently holds some of
Vargas' work for display and sale. If anyone would like to ask the gallery to
drop him from their list of artists the email address is below.
Email address: info@jacobkarpio-galeria.com

ALSO: The Animal Legal Defense Fund. suggests:

At this point, we feel the most effective method of protest is to write local animal protection agencies demanding they put a stop to this exhibit. You can search for agencies here in the Latin America/Caribbean section http://worldanimalnet.org/new.asp?co=&geo=SA&prov=&cat=are

On the other hand, we received this email today:

Hello Larry!

Re today's blog post: are you sure that everything this "artist" says is true?

Juanita Bermúdez, director of the Códice Gallery, insisted Natividad escaped after just one day. She said: 'It was untied all the time except for the three hours the exhibition lasted and it was fed regularly with dog food Habacuc himself brought in.'

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2269320,00.html

Chaining up a dog and forcing it to go without food and water in the name of art is a surefire way of making yourself unpopular with animal lovers. The furore created by Damien Hirst's pickled sheep and Tracey Emin's dirty bed pales into insignificance against the international outrage Guillermo 'Habacuc' Vargas has unleashed.

The Costa Rican has been called an animal abuser, killer and worse over claims that a stray dog called Natividad died of starvation after he displayed it at an exhibition last year at the Códice Gallery in Managua, Nicaragua. Vargas tethered the animal without food and water under the words 'Eres Lo Que Lees' - 'You Are What You Read' - made out of dog biscuits while he played the Sandinista anthem backwards and set 175 pieces of crack cocaine alight in a massive incense burner. More than a million people have signed an online petition urging organisers of this year's event to stop Vargas taking part.

Vargas, 32, said he wanted to test the public's reaction, and insisted none of the exhibition visitors intervened to stop the animal's suffering. He refused to say whether the animal had survived the show, but said he had received dozens of death threats. [emphasis mine]

Juanita Bermúdez, director of the Códice Gallery, insisted Natividad escaped after just one day. She said: 'It was untied all the time except for the three hours the exhibition lasted and it was fed regularly with dog food Habacuc himself brought in.'

Then again, it may be Ms. Bermudez who's pulling our chain, but this whole matter's not be so cut and dried... it may be as serious as you report, or it may be another artist-provocateur exploiting not animals, but people's capacity for outrage and willingness to embrace it.

Regards,
James

Is it true? I don't know...this looks bad: "He refused to say whether the animal had survived the show, but said he had received dozens of death threats." Maybe one of our readers in Costa Rica can tell us for sure...

Meanwhile, if Habcuc did it, it wouldn't have been the first time. At least one "artist" has killed a dog before, in the USA--Tom Otterness, according to Wikipedia:

Gary Indiana criticized Otterness for an independent work done while part of the East Village art scene in the mid-eighties called "Shot Dog Piece", in which Otterness "adopted a dog and then shot it to death for the fun of recording his infantile, sadistic depravity on film."

Here's what Indiana's wrote in New York Magazine:

But I’m repulsed by this show’s inclusion of Tom Otterness, a sculptor of limitless nonentity despite his demonstrated skill at conning public-art commissions and taste-impaired collectors into making him rich. Mr. Otterness, once upon a time, adopted a dog and then shot it to death for the fun of recording his infantile, sadistic depravity on film. I’d like the New Museum’s visitors to keep that in mind while looking at this creep’s work. Mr. Otterness isn’t one of those special exceptions deserving the adage “Lousy person, terrific artist.” Lousy both.

It didn't seem to hurt Otterness's art career--his "public art" installations include works on display at a New York City public school. As an alumnus of P.S. 24 in the Bronx, it makes me very sad...I found this post in the comments section of a Flickr site that gives more detail:

candidoescandido says:

I'm afraid... no I'm still very, very angry because in fact the piece about Shot Dog Piece is absolutely true. I was an art critic in New York at the time and I know how very difficult it was (and still is) to break into the NY art world. I used to hear the gallery owners complain about the young artists coming around and leaving their slides (God forbid that they would actually see the works themselves). The gallery owners could show a maximum of what- a dozen artists a year? So it was unfortunately necessary to do something to attract the attention of those with the power to make an artist and Otterness was hungry to make it and hit on a 'good idea'. I saw the video at a gallery I cannot remember at a group show. I didn't stay for the whole thing but I saw the puppy playing at Otterness’ feet as he lay sitting on the ground under a tree. Then he picked up a gun and shot it. I turned away so I couldn't authenticate whether or not he filmed the death throes of the dog or not. The accompanying material lead one to believe that the dog was his old family pet and was at the end of its useful life anyway. So that’s the story- a young artist so hungry to make it that he killed a dog in order to attract attention. Now the beloved artist is the toast of Beverly Hills with his own factory/foundry in Brooklyn and I think its more of an indictment of the incompleteness of the Internet that not one page details this crime than its being a cause for suspicion as to the truth of Otterness’ canineacide.

According to the Brooklyn Eagle, Otterness has apologized for killing the dog...but, I don't believe it has brought the dog back.