Dog Starved for Art Exhibit

But it is still wrong.

I guess the difference is the dog on the street is not being intentionally tormented by a human. The dog in an "art exhibit" was put there intentionally by someone. If someone dies because they fall off a building by accident that is different that someone pushing them.

Calling attention to pain and poverty is nothing new. He took an easy way out, finding the medium rather than his own skill or creativity to do the dirty work for him. It was an amazingly selfish thing to do as a publicity whore and for shock value to get his point across.

I understand that this is just one dirty dog in a sea of strays roaming the cities of the world. Would he take a crackhwhore of the street and chain them to a corner? A beggar from bangladesh? An earthquake victim from China, and shove them in a corner of a gallery without medical care, to die? This is one step below that. It's not like taking a documentary photo to evoke empathy and simply walking away to let nature and society decide fate.

Yes, suffering is omnipresent, but the way he tied up the dog without any choice or happenstance (yes, thank you Community Toy) and displaying it for public contemplation is also inherently making a mockery of it's existence, evocative of a freak show act, and not giving the reverence it's individual plight is due. This reality goes completely against what he believes it represents.

Keep in mind that I'm NOT an animal rights person- I keep undomesticated creatures, and I've got a box of frozen mice in my freezer. I just believe that what's right is right. What he did is at the very least distasteful, at the very worst, no less than torture.

they claim they fed the dog off hours...

dunno.

animal welfare is a Big Issue. It's good to showcase it, and I like the idea of the art piece. But when we start getting into harm and death... well we start getting messy (hello there fellow meat eaters, we kill things indirectly every day, for money).