Your Art Work Is A Bloody Mess!

Art made with blood won't cut it on eBay

Is it any wonder contemporary art has become such a bloody mess?
Stories like the one about Montreal artist John David Margo, his Toronto dealer Mariemar Gallery and eBay are enough to put you off ever looking at another work of modern art.
The tale hit the news earlier this week when eBay, the web auctioneer, withdrew a series of artworks by Margo.
The pieces are unremarkable but for the fact they were painted with human blood, or so the artist says.
But as far as eBay is concerned, blood is a "human body part" and, therefore, a forbidden item.
Inspired by the events of 9/11, Margo's series, 101 Views of Jerusalem, was produced with blood from "Muslim, Jewish and Christian congregationists (sic)."
According to Mariemar Gallery co-director Sabrina Lee, "The blood, mixed together and applied directly to the artworks as pigment, symbolizes ... victims, violators and voyeurs observed by the impartial artist, traumatized by passionate religious/political extremist acts of violence since 9/11. We knew this was a contentious subject and the use ... of human blood would be highly controversial, to say the least."
Huh?
But what upset Lee was the fact that eBay withdrew the works.
"To say we are trading in human body parts would be wrong," she insists. "His images are the most original I have seen from any contemporary artist today."
Clearly, Lee hasn't seen much. Margo's works show little evidence of skill and even less of originality.
One piece, with the unfortunate and ill-advised title Boom Boom Goes To New York, includes the Manhattan skyline and an airplane above.
In Margo's words, "With this painting, the viewer has a bird's-eye view from behind American Airlines Flight 11 (Allah, the word for God in Arabic, is shaped as an aircraft), approaching the Manhattan skyline (created with the Hebrew word for God) 8:44 a.m., Sept. 11, 2001."
In his artist's statement, Margo informs us, with an apparently straight face, "Fascinating new images are haunting my drawings as I observe the world through television and newspaper. Ancient languages are taking shape. Hate, love, power and poverty are manipulating beautifully written scripts into visual images represented in words and deeds."
If anyone knows what this means, please let us know.
It's not unusual for an artist to be inarticulate, devoid of talent, or, for that matter, to use blood. Istvan Kantor, who won a Governor-General's Visual Art award last year, has gained an international reputation splattering vials of his own on the walls of art galleries around the world. As a result, he has been banned from the National Gallery of Canada and is persona non grata at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Other artists, most notably Piero Manzoni, have used not their blood but their excrement as a medium and the message. In 1961, Manzoni produced 90 cans of his own feces, each titled Merda d'artista.
Though eBay would undoubtedly have refused to have anything to do with the work, Sotheby's wasn't so squeamish. In 1991, a can of Manzoni's best sold at auction for $67,000 (U.S.).
But for the Ontario media, what makes Margo's story newsworthy was his claim that he collected blood from Muslims, Christians and Jews in an "Ottawa area donor campaign."
No one in the capital seems to know what campaign Margo is talking about and so the search is on. Let's hope it isn't in vain.
Some might also wonder why an art gallery would put its artist's work on eBay in the first place. Isn't the selling of art the gallery's job?
"We're new at the game of selling art," admits co-director David Melnick. "I thought I'd put the work on eBay and let market forces decide what it's worth."
However, Melnick insists, it was all worth the effort.
"The blood itself looks great," he reports.

Christopher Hume