Art is Dead: or A Corpse is a Corpse, of Course, of Course

The New York Times had an interesting article addressing the idea of "shocking" art. The British Press have been having a field day, discussing the Chapman Brothers, the latest enfant terribles of the English art scene. Their latest entry to the 2003 Turner Prize evokes just such a reaction.

From the Times article, "Around the gallery hang 80 reproductions of etchings from Goya's 'Disasters of War' series, with clown faces superimposed over the original heads. In the middle are two painted bronze sculptures. One, 'Death,' includes what looks like a couple of inflatable sex toys performing unprintable acts, complete with a vibrator. The other, 'Sex,' is a decomposed human corpse and other animal parts hanging from a tree, with your basic assortment of maggots and 'flies, spiders, lizards, mice, rats, snails, worms and centipedes...'"

Their Goya work involves actual works by the artist himself. The Brothers Jake and Dinos bought a complete set of Goya's "Disasters of War." They then went about systematically defacing or "rectifying" the entire collection, drawing clown or puppy faces over every head of every dead victim.

But when is a dead body not art? When it's just a body mistaken as an installation.