http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_739153.html

A Belgian animal rights group has protested against the plans of a famous vegetarian artist to tattoo piglets as a piece of art.

Wim Delvoye says he wants to tattoo 23 piglets weighing about 50kg with poems and then exhibit them during a cultural festival in Watou in the summer.

"At the end of the summer the pigs will weigh about 300kg and the poems will have reached a huge size", Mr Delvoye said.

The artist says he wants to protest against the attitude of considering art more and more as a financial investment.

"The value of paintings is rising and so will do the pigs", he said.

Because animal rights group Gaia has protested against the idea, Mr Delvoye has promised to take proper care of the animals.

The tattoo session will be filmed and all the animals will receive sedation before being tattooed.

"They won't feel anything", promised Mr Delvoye. "And we will use cream in the summer to prevent them getting sunburn.

"And after the festival the animals won't go to the butcher. I'm a convinced vegetarian myself and I'm against animals suffering."

Gaia is said to be pleased the artist and organisers of the festival have agreed to a meeting.

ummmmm...what? Sedation alone has the risk of death, this man is obviously uneducated.......or just plain insane.

You'd better the hell believe a 50 kg pig is going to be sedated for tatooing (and guess what, it's not for the pigs sake!)

Although I'd prefer to see the scene of this extremely ethical vegetarian trying to do it without sedating a 110 lb animal....

Monsieur Delvoye should have a poem tattooed on his knob and leave the pigs alone IMO

What is this??? Pigs are living beings, not property for humans to turn into works of art!!!! And what I really dont get is that the person doing this is a vegetarian! So, he feels its not okay to eat animals, but its somehow okay to toruture them & turn them into works of art??! I don't see the logic here...I'm just really bothered by this whole issue!!!!

Maybe he should also tattoo babies with poems about child abuse and make them works of art. :rolleyes:

Very good point Thalia!

I can't comprehend how a vegetarian could be thinking of doing that! I'm assuming he isn't vegetarian for ethical reasons. Why would anyone want to do that anyway? What a stupid, ignorant man he must be!!!

He is inflicting animal cruelty with poems against animal cruelty.
How ironic.

This isn't the first time.

He's already done an exhibit where he tattoo'd pigs with various rock & roll tattoos. See *this article* (http://www.artnet.com/magazine/reviews/fiers/fiers1-9-01.asp) for some pictures. And it's doubtful that he'll take proper care of the "poem"-tattoed pigs since he ended up stuffing and skinning the other ones, selling some at auctions. He has a book of his pig artwork entitled "Pigs" *for sale* (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/9057790122/qid=1043399017/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-8887873-8533634?v=glance&s=books&n=507846).

He is also famous for his "marble floors" which are made from salami and ham cut into squares to look like fancy marble floors.

His most recent project was a machine that took a piece of meat, processed it, and turned it into a *pile of ***** (http://www.cloaca.be).

Clearly the man is insane.....

Stupid.
Poor pigs.