www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

There's probably little more to be said but I thought I'd post the link anyway:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/cult ... -show.html

Guy

Saddening, but then I suppose butterfly houses are guilty of similar given that people also tread on them and swat them when visiting.

Wasn't there once a south American 'artist' who tied a dog up and allowed it to slowly starve to death in the name of art?

Is it really so different to butterfly houses such as Wisley's exhibition in the glasshouse every year? I do love going but my gut instinct tells me it's cruel.

Thanks for pointing this out, Guy. I feel a tweet coming on

Cheers,

- Pete

Susie wrote:Is it really so different to butterfly houses such as Wisley's exhibition in the glasshouse every year?

I don't know more about Wisley than I've read on these pages but I suspect it is rather different from Hirst's installation:


(That picture taken from http://www.theedgesusu.co.uk/culture/20 ... on-review/)

I don't think you'd keep going back to that, Susie!

The guff reviewers come out with in defence of this living morgue defies belief. Nature in all her ancient glory teaches us daily about transience and mortality - we don't need childish lessons from an arrogant fool like Hirst.

Yes, David - you are right about the South American. I would look up the reference except it broke my heart the first time I researched it and I don't want to again. He also had a lame excuse, about highlighting suffering or some nonsense - but if he had simply adopted the dog and looked after it he would have done infinitely more good.

Guy

Wisley is more pleasing to the eye but the essence isnt really any different.

The butterflies at Wisley aren't able to produce offspring which have a chance of survival which so far as I am concerned is their main purpose in life.

Susie wrote:The butterflies at Wisley aren't able to produce offspring which have a chance of survival which so far as I am concerned is their main purpose in life.

Don't they mate and lay &c. at Wisley, to produce later generations? If the butterflies there are only 'on display' then sadly I fear you're right. It won't lessen my contempt for Hirst, though!

Guy

I share your dislike of what Hirst has done.

At Wisley they can mate and lay, as I imagine they could do in Hirst's 'Art' but the eggs don't fulfill their life cycle. They are picked off, swept up, and destroyed. Last year I watched a butterfly full off eggs flying from plant to plant and tasting it with her feet. She was looking for the larval food plant but it wasnt there. I don't know what she did, perhaps she laid her eggs on something she knew was wrong out of desperation but I could feel how uncomfortable she was. That was the moment Wisley lost it's charm for me.

Sorry for going off topic but I am curious why the RSPCA raise one issue and not the other when there really is little difference.

padfield wrote:
Yes, David - you are right about the South American. I would look up the reference except it broke my heart the first time I researched it and I don't want to again. He also had a lame excuse, about highlighting suffering or some nonsense - but if he had simply adopted the dog and looked after it he would have done infinitely more good.

I empathise, Guy. Normally, I would find a link in circumstances such as these but I really don't wish to inflict such an outrage on others.

I actually feel guilty as I felt more appalled over this than most news stories involving human suffering. Perhaps there is a common theme in that - i.e. we, as human beings, never feel more outraged than when the recipient of the cruelty is someone/something that is so inherently innocent and trusting as to make itself a sitting target for such abuse.

I genuinely don't know how some people can sleep in their beds at night....

Really wish I hadn't looked in this thread.

I don't like what Damien Hirst has done but it has made me wonder if it is actually worse than anything else where we use animals for our own purposes.

Susie wrote:I don't like what Damien Hirst has done but it has made me wonder if it is actually worse than anything else where we use animals for our own purposes.

Well, it's certainly not worse than the south American 'artist' who starved a dog, that's for sure.

That's not art, just depravity.

Susie wrote:That's not art, just depravity.

I'd go further: it's a criminal offence.

David M wrote: I'd go further: it's a criminal offence.

But in our sick society some criminal offences are seen as "art"