Kanye just posted this little piece of art by Meryl Smith- a doggie bag, appropriated with the LV monogram... and I've gotta say it.  Regardless of the major yuck factor for this piece in particular, I'm so over the whole concept.

I mean, I get it.  Artists who want to make a statement "borrow" the LV marks because they are powerful and get noticed.  But it's just lazy.  It's been done to death.  (Think Nadia Plesner's Darfur shirt, Wim Delvoye's LV tatoo'd pigs, Peter Gronquist's monogram Electric Chair (and chainsaw, glocks, artillary shells & Gazelle? of all things- etc. etc).

And I don't know about you... but I think Louis Vuitton/ Marc Jacobs gets this.  So much so that maybe that's part of the reason they brought Richard Prince on board.  You know, Richard Prince... "the Man who invented Appropriation".

What do you think?

OK, I am more than slightly disturbed by this little story that I came across! There is a Belgian artist named Wim Delvoye, who is apparently inspired by his rural, small town upbringing where the pigs outnumbered the people. He has hired a bunch of farmers, and is raising about 20 pigs in the tiny village of Chenjiatuo, China on his "Art Farm".

So, he takes these pigs, sedates them and then tattoos them with all sorts of images: roses, mermaids, angels- they look like little, pink, living Ed Hardy billboards.

Apparently, the pigs live good, pampered lives on this farm... and are bought and raised by these foster farmers until their natural deaths, when they are skinned and their hides stretched. Anyway, it's supposed to be art

So why Louis Vuitton hides???

Says Delvoye, "We saw all these fake Louis Vuitton designer bags. You always read in newspapers about other countries complaining about these fakes and then, as an artist, I'm interested in what's fake and what's real," Delvoye said. "I like to play with ownership rights."

I guess!

Here's an odd little video about the "artist" and his pigs.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUcX0owdIhY]