I was appalled at a report on the so-called behavioral art that touts masochism and brutality.
Just imagine an artist having a slice of his/her skin removed from his/her belly to be stitched onto a lump of pork; an artist having the pattern of his ID card branded on his shoulders; an artist having himself fastened to a rafter to let his blood drip from a self-afflicted wound onto a red hot stone down below just to produce a sizzling effect; or an artist eating the flesh of a stewed dead baby and proclaims it's nothing but carbohydrate.
Are they out their minds or am I? How could a man in the possession of his senses have behaved in such an outrageous and utterly obnoxious way?
A successful work of art is normally expected to instill into the viewers a sense of beauty and ennoble one's spirit. Although art is all Greek to me, I still retain the ability to distinguish between good and evil, beauty and ugliness, nobleness of mind and outright decadence.
I am fully aware that I am saying all this at the risk of being labeled an old fogey. Young people, as a rule, prefer novelty to conventions, breaking fresh ground to following the beaten track. But novelty is definitely not the equivalent of absurdity or whatsoever suggests barbarism, even cannibalism.
It must be a tragedy if the trend is allowed to go on unchecked, for this morbid mentality not only contradicts the basic principles of art but runs counter to law and social ethics that are meant to protect us and set guidelines for our behavior.
(Shanghai Star 04/26/2001)
