When you see a horse in a painting, it is often a symbol of majesty, nobility. The very English horses of Stubbs and Munnings also speak of class. Dogs are symbols of domesticity. Small dogs, often portrayed with their female owners, signal intimacy, fidelity; whereas large dogs are all about the estate, the hunt, the working of the land. Cows are the queens of the bucolic pastoral; we cannot think of Constable without picturing a few bovine characters in his landscapes. The dove says “peace”, the symbol of the holy ghost in many religious pictures. But if we start getting into the symbolism of birds, we’ll be here all day (and this is something I have previously dealt with, right from the start, with my post pitching the sentimental swan against the rough and tumble crow).
But what about the humble pig? A much-maligned animal. Considered to be dirty, stupid, greedy, fat. And laughable. If pigs were typefaces, they would be the Comic Sans of the animal world. But I think the pig might be having its day. I have certainly seen quite a few of them about recently, in unexpected places, giving me a cheeky wink and a shake of their adorable curly tails.
I suppose Wim Delvoye’s work is an acquired taste (no pun intended to those out there who enjoy a bit of crackling). Even the Belgian authorities questioned the validity of his project on the grounds of animal cruelty (he has since moved to China, where they have, let us say, a more open-minded policy). As part of his Art Farm project, Delvoye tattoos live pigs (under sedation of course) and displays either the skins, which are mounted and framed, or sometimes the whole pig, in all its beautiful tattooed glory. Hairy Biker meets Animal Farm …
I guess the logical question is: why do it? In light of Charles Saatchi’s recent attack on the frivolity and vulgarity of the art world, it could be argued that Delvoye’s pigs could potentially be one of his targets (not forgetting his early support for Damian Hurst and his formaldehyde menagerie). But I wonder if we’ve become too poe-faced in our reception to art, expecting everything to be transformative and enlightening (especially through the ‘intervention’, to use a popular art phrase, of curatorial prose). Robert Enright says that ‘Delvoye is involved in a way of making art that reorients our understanding of how beauty can be created’, which I certainly agree with, but I have to say that seeing one of his pigs in the gallery just made me laugh. We need to be able to laugh at the world, and its strangeness, even in these difficult times, don’t we?
To get back to the issue of animal welfare, what is striking about Delvoye’s project is that the pig, transformed through tattooing into an art object of great value, is allowed to live out the course of its natural life, a luxury not afforded to most pigs. They lead happy lives, blithely unaware of their charmed status.
I should add that Delvoye is a vegetarian…
The other colossal pig triumph at the moment is Paul McCarthy’s monumental ‘Train, Mechanical’, currently on show (behind blacked-out glass) at Hauser and Wirth. I have to confess that I have never liked McCarthy’s work – a little too gruesome and scatological for me – but this is impressively sick. It is a huge mechanical sculpture with twin George W. Bush figures sodomising two pigs, who in turn are being serviced in the ear by two smaller pigs. Forgive me if this causes offence – it is obviously suppose to. And I have to admit that I admired the sheer scale and insanity of it (and yes, I’m sorry, it did make me laugh as well). And if you’re looking for a message, perhaps it is simply that the Bush administration f***ed America (if you accept that in that analogy, America is depicted as a giant pig) twice over (Bush father and son).
If nothing else, it’s a truly great feat of engineering …