Disturbing New Art Trend: Meat as a Medium
I’m not one to ever knock someone’s art. It’s a piece of them, an expression of their feelings and beliefs. So to each of these artists and their current galleries and exhibits I simply say: to each his own.
* Currently showing at New York City’s Daneyal Mahmood Gallery is the exhibit “Meat After Meat Joy” where 17 artists have fashioned pieces out of meat. The artwork ranges from carefully sculpted animal flesh to an entire set of male parts hanging on a hook. This comes a follow up to Carolee Schneemann’s 1964 feminist “Meat Joy.”
Participating artist Adam Brandejs said that, “if the flesh disturbs you, then the reality behind the issue would disturb you far more if we opened our eyes long enough to see it.”
“This is not a show about meat as spectacle but about meat as signification,” reads the online description of the show, “precisely because meat does not signify a body but its very annihilation.”
There are definite undertones of animal rights, but the fact is that dozens of animals died for this show. 
* The Village Petstore and Charcoal Grill is also on display in New York City and also uses meat. This show, however, specifically sets out to comment on the way we as a society exploit animals. Banksy, the artist behind the Petstore, turned chicken nuggets into baby chicks, an old fur coat into a leopard, and fishsticks into swimming fish in a bowl.
* And the winner for weirdest meat art … the Russians. Six artists got together to celebrate the centenary of a meat-processing factory in southern Russia by recreating historic, well-known paintings 
(such as the Mona Lisa, which was painted by Da Vinci, who was a vegetarian!) out of edible sausage. Guests of the show were invited to take a bite. Gross. I wish someone were able to sue on behalf of Leonardo.
Read more at Russian Today and see more pictures at English Russia.
October 30th, 2008 at 10:30 am
[...] Without Meat: Disturbing New Art Trend: Meat as a Medium by Sally Andersen “Currently showing at New York City’s Daneyal Mahmood Gallery is the exhibit [...]
October 30th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Yuck.
But it’s not as though eating meat is a much better use for dead animal flesh. Humans don’t need to kill animals period, not for food and certainly not for art.