However, other versions are that the dog ran away in the middle of the biennale and that the dog was fed at least once by the artist. Several pictures of the dog on the internet show he was rather ill. Habacuc's own statements, suggesting the dog was so ill he'd have died anyway, support the public understanding that the dog died most likely as part of the art work. Can such art be art?
I've always been against censorship of art no matter how much it offends. I welcomed British-Nigerian Chris Ofili's "The Holy Virgin Mary", where he used elephant dung on the figure of a black Mary. Ofili said that the elephant dung was sacred, as far as he was concerned, because his Nigerian heritage deemed it thus. I also consider M F Husain's exile by default a tragedy and a marker of the lowest ebb of public discourse.
But what can we make of Habacuc? Should the organisers have censored him?
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