[79CamaroDiva]

As a graduate of art school, this sadly doesn't surprise me, however, as an animal lover, it apalls me. I can see it from both sides. As an artist, he is doing it to make a point, to force the viewers to see what happens to strays every day, along with the inherent beauty of a living creature taking its last breath (sounds sick maybe, but its there). Contemporary artists are extremists. In a world where everything has already been done, its hard to find something new to make a name for yourself. Using animals, dead or a live, is not something new either. In the 60s, Robert Beuys made a performance piece entitled How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare. Another performance artist used live wolves, and yet another even shot his own hand for a video piece.

As an animal lover, I would think that finding an already dead animal might be able to get the same point across, and my instincts would be to take the animal to the vets to help it, but some different cultures see things different ways.