Life in the Fast Lane

Widely criticized for some of his vastly controversial methods of artwork on what some deem as highly intelligent pets, conceptual artist Wim Delvoye has found a rather provocative means to express art by tattooing pigs with Disney designs, legendary stories, cartoons, and the Louis Vuitton logo on ‘live skins,’ and raking in exorbitant sums of money for selling their hides.

Wim Delvoye’s tattooed pigs.

UPDATE:
Due to demands from the artist Wim Delvoye and his agent working on his behalf, all images on this page which had previously appeared here have been removed, including Creative Commons licensed images for which the agent is now challenging the authors over.

In the manner of a tenacious collection agent chasing after delinquent payees, not only were the images demanded to be removed by his agent, but this page entirely — in essence, this entire story.

“We strongly urge you to remove this particular link from the website.” I was given 5 days to comply.

With the series of consistent emails that I received from Wim Delvoye’s agent insisting that we cannot publish any works by the artist without shelling out hundreds of dollars to do so, and demand to remove this article from this website, it has gone from a simple request to a full-blown ordeal over freedom of speech and “fair use.”

This is but one example for which I can say that I am fortunate and feel blessed that I live in a free country where freedom of speech is the right of every citizen. My stubborn streak won’t permit me to be bullied, so citing the freedom of speech act, I refused to concede and delete this article.

After spending hours contacting the Creative Commons agency and various avenues of resources, what I have gleaned by some information is that it’s common belief that screenshots published of publicly available videos is considered ‘fair use,’ and no one has ever been sued for it. It’s been stated that taking a screenshot which is 1 frame of an entire video is only a small fraction of the entire work, and if it’s for informational or educational use and not for profit then the artist probably doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

In addition to freedom of speech, one also has legal rights for “fair use.” Section 107 of the copyright law contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair,” such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.

Bearing this in mind, I am within my legal rights to publish the images that appear here, as I am reporting on this artist and conveying the research I have made on him, and teaching our dear viewers by educating you about his works. I am also commenting and offering my criticism.

Close-up view of one of Wim Delvoye’s tattooed pigs.

Wim Delvoye’s tattoo cartoon handiwork on a pig.

Louis Vuitton logo’s repeatedly tattooed onto a pair of Delvoye’s pigs.

When scare tactics didn’t work and I didn’t succumb to deleting this article, the agent attempted to tug on my heart strings to shell out hundreds of dollars for the ‘privilege’ of publishing some of Wim’s images to promote his work for him with this article stating, “some artists have also become homeless! This is a very sad situation.”

Don’t get me wrong, I highly appreciate artists and love to see them succeed and earn good a living from their creative works.

We receive countless contacts from artists and their agents requesting to be promoted at Life in the Fast Lane, but unfortunately, we cannot accommodate everyone. I support artists in my endeavor to publish interesting and unusual artworks, and wherever possible, we provide links to the artist’s website if they have one, in order to help to promote them.

I am sorry to say however, that I am not a wealthy person, and I don’t make a thin dime for my publications on this site to help sustain the high costs of running it. With that in light, I do what I can to promote artists, but we do not subsidize artists by paying them to promote them.

It can be extremely challenging for artists to garner attention, and to that end, many attempt to create highly controversial works to gain attention and notoriety for themselves. I do ‘get’ that. In fact, I have been a struggling artist myself, and was forced into doing what so many others have done, and gotten a job, as income from my creations was not enough to sustain me. In fact, I became self-employed.

But when someone pushes my buttons with demands to take down the text itself of my own work of content and challenge my freedom of speech, I will not stand down. Nothing had been written here that was defamatory, slanderous, or incorrect. While I had previously held my own personal opinion to myself for the most part, it’s now no holds-barred, baby.

Some artists may not be internet savvy enough to realize that the power of the internet and social media can garner broad attention. As quickly as they may gain notoriety and fame, they can fall from the public’s grace by the same means.

Also to the merit of the net and great friends in social media, I was given direction to my legal rights as a blogger. If you are a blogger, I have revealed one of my blogging secrets to you for use of video screenshots when few images are available. I also urge you to learn your legal rights, and join the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) that provides a wealth of information in this realm, as I have done.

Wim Delvoye and assistant as he tattoos one of his creations on a pig.

The artist’s signature verifies that the pigs are indeed the handiwork of Wim Delvoye.

Wim Delvoye as he tattoos one of his pigs.

In my quest for information on this artist, I was unable to find anything documented that stated that these pigs receive anything to nullify the pain, while as many as 3 to 4 individuals work at once in various areas on these creatures. It has been stated however that they do receive sedation, which essentially makes them incapable of struggling to escape from the procedure. But watching the videos, one can clearly see that they’re not sedated enough to be put to sleep.

With eyes still closed, the swine begins to put up a struggle to escape the procedure.
No doubt that this creature is in pain.

In this image, one can clearly see the grave look of concern on the assistant’s face
over the struggle with the pig that has been attempting to make its exit,
despite its groggy state of sedation.

Those who have had tattoos done can attest that the procedure can be very painful. For an animal that doesn’t have the capacity to understand what’s being done to them, this can be highly traumatizing.

One person had written that pigs do not have sensitive skin, but did not substantiate the claim with any backup. PETA and other animal activists claim that a pig’s skin is similar to a human being’s in sensitivity.

The Belgian artist moved to China to perform his procedures on pigs, where there are fewer strictures regarding animal welfare and rights than in most parts of the Western world.

What apparently seems to be Wim Delvoye’s ‘Art Farm’ for pigs in Beijing.

Image helps to depict that these pigs are located in Beijing, China.

A pig stall at the farm.

If that isn’t enough to make your skin crawl, Wim Delvoye performed the macabre act of tattooing the back of one Tim Steiner, and sold the ‘works’ to German bidder, Rik Reinking. When Tim dies, his back will be skinned and sent on to Rik. Some will do anything for money and notoriety. Tim will share in the sale of his ’skin,’ but under contract he must perform as a living canvas publicly 3 times per year.

Tim Steiner displays his tattooed back on a television interview.

Tim Steiner reveals his ‘living canvas’ performed by Wim Delvoye to a TV audience.

Tim Steiner’s lower back.

Tim Steiner’s upper back revealing the black skull above the Virgin Mary, with what
appears to be large bats and vultures swooning around her.

Wim Delvoye’s signature to his living canvas on Tim Steiner’s lower right side.

And if that doesn’t do it for you, Wim Delvoye devised a poop machine that mimics the human digestive system to produce what smells and looks like human feces. The machine has been replicated and updated for various installations on public display. Not only that, the artist has sold works of his own feces. He has even convinced friends to daub their ‘private parts’ with toxic substances to enable x-ray images of them to be taken while performing sex acts which have been put on public display.

The “Cloaca machine,” Latin for “toilet.” Wim Delvoye said he “built Cloaca
to stop people from treating their sh*t like sh*t.”

The Cloaca poop machine spews out its production which is then packaged and sold.
Who is actually crazy enough to pay hard earned cash for this, quite literally, sh*t?

In light of all of the above, if you still care to be more informed about this artist’s work, read on as this article had been published in its original form (sans previous images), but the link to his website has been removed, of my own volition, for apparent reasons. Cached pages of websites may still be available for a certain duration, ahem.

Wim Delvoye’s story continues …
The tattooed pigs are displayed at art exhibitions — their skins are sold to art collectors after slaughter, or they can buy the animals and pay for their upkeep until their demise and then have them skinned. Art buyers can also purchase a pig to take home to live with them, but Delvoye has claimed that none have actually done so.

The Belgian artist has made a lucrative business for his notorious methods, commanding as much as $150,000 U.S. (one million yuan) a skin for themes ranging from prominent stories and cartoons to religious depictions of Jesus and the Virgin Mother Mary.

Born in the municipality of Wervik, West Flanders, Belgium in 1965, Delvoye moved his ‘practice’ to a small farm in the small village of Chenjiatuo, Shunyi District, Beijing, China in 2004, where there are fewer strictures regarding animal welfare and rights than in most parts of the Western world.

At his ‘Art Farm’ as the artist calls it, the young pigs are tattooed, and then raised while the ‘art piece’ grows over time as they mature.

It’s been claimed that the animals are first sedated and then shaved and tattooed just as human would be, but watching the video below, one can clearly see that these creatures are not fully asleep while being made into a living art project.

Once full-grown, the pigs are taken to a taxidermist to be skinned and cured to make wall hangings, stretched over frames to produce pictures from their hides, or fully stuffed as taxidermied statues.

Delvoye first began tattooing artwork on the skins of dead pigs at Belgium in 1992, and evolved to work on live pigs by 1997.

He was scheduled to appear with 8 of his pigs tattooed with Disney designs and the Louis Vuitton logo at the Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair last September, but officials pulled the plug in him shortly before the exhibition was set to open after deciding it was in poor taste.

“We have collectors who’ve traveled to China all the way from Europe to see the pigs.” said a disgruntled Delvoye. “They’re very disappointed.”

Animal rights and PETA activists have had concerns, stating that a pig’s skin closely resembles a human’s in sensitivity. Sitting through countless hours under the needle, the animals are put through severe pain with as many as 3 or 4 tattooists working at once to cover their entire backs and sides, whereas the work is progressed over numerous sessions on humans.

Aside from the pain, they say the sheer intensity of anxiety, fear, and confusion that these creatures go through as they fail to understand what’s happening to them is an atrocity.

Delvoye’s infamous fondness of pigskin as a medium for live investments of ‘piggybanks’ which was challenged at the Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair was preceded with a shocking event the week prior when he sold a ‘living tattoo’ on another man’s back that took 35 hours to create.

The artist inked the back of a Swiss man which he sold to German collector, Rik Reinking from Hamburg, for $216,000. The contract states the collector can display the 31-year-old musician Tim Steiner’s back, bearing a tattoo of the Virgin Mary and a death skull 3 times a year as a living canvas. When Steiner dies, the tattoo will be skinned from his back and passed on to the collector. The work can also be resold, donated, or bequeathed like any other artwork.

Steiner denies that the concept is macabre.

“If the project finishes the way it should, and the skin will be removed and properly framed, then I will exist forever, at least a part of me will, and I find that concept more exciting than morbid.” Steiner said.

One of Delvoye’s most ill-famed installations was his Cloaca (Latin for ‘toilet’) exhibit — a machine that mimics the human digestive system to produce what smells and looks like human feces, which was first exhibited at the MuHKA (Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp) in 2000.

Once installed on-site, the machine became a living thing with real human stomach bacteria that had to be fed a meal twice a day, the feces coming out the other end of the processing unit as a result of the ‘digestion’ of the food.

The logo and other promotional artwork of the Cloaca project was a parody of the logos of Coca-Cola, Ford, Mr. Clean, among other brands. The feces produced by the Cloaca machines were sold vacuum-packed in translucent boxes.

Around 2001, Delvoye arranged for some of his friends to paint parts of their bodies with small amounts of barium — a soft silver-white toxic chemical element — who then had sex in actual medical clinics, and x-rays taken of the acts.

The x-rays were presented as large stained-glass church windows at exhibitions. From a distance they appeared as abstract forms, but on closer inspection you could see what the images were actually composed of.

The artist had used this method previously for his art piece entitled “Mosaic” in 1992. The work consists of glazed tiles bearing an identical image, arranged to form symmetrical and highly ornate patterns. But when you examine it closely you realize that each tile bears the image of 2 pieces of feces — the artist’s own excrement.

Wim Delvoye’s Tattooed Pigs

Cloaca the Poop Machine

Sources: Bella Online, Art Info, and Wikipedia

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