Yale Daily News

This article walks the reader through the woods identifying every possible twig, shoot and tree along the way and never noticing the forest itself.

The question Schvartz raises for the srt world and academia is:

In a world in which every pharmacy advertises openly on shelves products which make human reproduction and its fluids subservient to recreation, can human reproduction and its fluids be a valid art medium?

If not, why can they be a valid scientific medium (for experimentation)?

If so, what questions do they raise about about the intentionality of Nature and the ethics related to modifying that intentionality?

The Yale community's avoidance or denial of these questions seems to me to be intellectual negligence.

Perhaps Puritanical prudery, administrative prissiness or fear of an abortion lobby alumni donor revolt, are all actually covers for fear of ideas.

Tis a shame.

"Moved on?" Yes, in a way, although I still find the "artist" and her "art" beneath contempt, deducting from dignity, narcissistic in the worst way, and just plain "ugly" (in the conceptual sense).

But, of course, I am a philistine when it comes to art...

Sorry, why are we revisiting this again?

can't we just forget about it? please?

Shvarts belong in a psych ward. What more could there possibly be to discuss???

Examine the forest and not the trees? Why don't you examine the pedantic nature of your own writing and thought process, #1? What the hell are you actually talking about, you tool?

We are REvisiting it because it has never been adequately VISITED in the first place except to report on hysteria and shock.

Doesn't the N in YDN stand for new? This is basically just re-writing a bunch of articles from last year.

". . . start with Aliza Shvarts: if what she wanted to do was to get us to ask certain questions, and if the controversy that her project created got in the way of that discussion, could she have done anything differently to get those questions asked in a more productive, public way? Who behaved badly/counterproductively during that scandal? The university administration? Faculty? Aliza Shvarts herself? Fox News? All of the above? "

From comment on April 3 letter to editor on "the liberal arts..."

#6

Tool or not, here is what I'm saying: if you can separate Schvartz's art from the hysteria ans shock which surrounds it, it raises valid questions about a culture which has turned the human body itself into an endless and dubiously ethical scientific experiment.

PS
Sorry my stuffy prose got under your skin.

“The lack of communication and transparency between the Art Department and other officials at Yale seemed rather shocking,” she said. “But, while I do not have respect for how the debacle was handled, I do have respect for the Art Department who encouraged her to work on ‘shock art."
-Ari Berkowitz, '12

Yale is criticized for shutting down abortion art and preventing it from interfering with the Bulldog Days experience.

The Art Department is lauded for promoting artistically-empty, attention-seeking, profoundly disturbed shock art.

Thank you for citing such an incisive source.

Otherwise, great article.

Good article. Thank you. Not all of us were in the little bubble last year, so it's cool to have a retrospective on something that was fairly significant arount here.

#6 - I vote tool. The article reports the event and the aftermath. It's up to the reader to reach his/her own conclusions about the "art." As for me, the only art I see here is in her name. If what she did was real, then it's deviant and destructive behavior, which hardly qualifies as art. If it was a hoax, then its just vaseline, plastic, and red dye #3 posing as disgusting subject matter. Either way, it's sensationalistic, offensive tripe. At the end of the day, I suspect that's why it wasn't displayed, not because there is some administrative conspiracy at this university against cutting edge art that makes a profound statement. If you think I'm wrong, google "Shvarts" in about 20 years and see if you have any great art reviews. Don't think so. I'm betting #5 knows where she is.

If this had been a male artist using his body's contribution to a potential embryo as art, I doubt there would have been such hysteria as we still detect a year later (a full year!) in # 2,3,6,12.
I'll bet they are all males too.

PS Few actually SAW the art peice so it is difficult to evaluate it as "art" as # 12 so confidently seems to do.

Nothing is sacred. That is what the hysterical reaction is screaming. That is what Schvartz has taught us----- that is what we have come to.

#13 makes an interesting point.

Had a male, uh, "painted" his, uh, "seed" in some way, well, we would have laughed!

Why, then, is the Shvarts girl so... unfunny?

Likely because we recognize the tangential requirement of male contribution, but also, innately, the fundamental necessity/duty/power? (Hmmm... at a loss for the right word, and I hesitate to use "sacred" because I do not think that the "specialness" of human life even need to resort to religion).

A male's crusty tee-shirt is just funny.
A female's alleged (and never recanted) intentional destruction of her own offspring is, well, kinda sick.

"offspring"? How do you know that a moning after pill sloughs off a zygote? it may simply be sloughing off an unfertilized egg. Sounds sexist to me. Women just can't win. MEN are desperate to retain control(with their big fat mouths) of women's reproductive decisions, even when those decisions purport to be art.

PS Loved your comment about Harold Bloom in today's article!

To those posters who would prefer *not* to talk about the Aliza Shvarts scandal: why post a comment at all, particularly if all you offer is a conversation stopper (#3-5, for example)? Nobody is forcing you to read, think about, or discuss any of this. If you really have no good reason for posting, other than to register your desire not to talk about it, then we’re all better off without your posts, since you don’t offer anything of value to the conversation. (Unless, of course, you’re posting because you *do* in fact want to talk about it, which makes a lot more sense.)

What interests me about this whole thing is that, as far as I can tell, nobody--except Aliza Shvarts--knows precisely what happened. And that makes the issues difficult to tease apart. #12 more or less sums the question up, though not without including his or her own value judgments: “If what she did was real, then it's deviant and destructive behavior, which hardly qualifies as art. If it was a hoax, then its [sic] just vaseline, plastic, and red dye #3 posing as disgusting subject matter. Either way, it's sensationalistic, offensive tripe.” But because *nobody knows* whether it was “real” or not, we can’t *really* tell what we’re arguing about. If people knew that it was a hoax, people might get “offended” (which is really just a complaint, let’s not forget) because of the subject matter itself, or because of way it was approached, or perhaps because the deception itself and the negative public attention it generated. Still, if we knew it was a hoax, we wouldn’t have seen nearly the same kind of vehement, moralizing outrage that we did see (e.g., people calling her a murderer, and so on). On the other hand, what if we *knew* it was real? Then the conversation would be about something very, very different. And maybe she really did do it, or at least tried to (wasn’t there some medical skepticism about her claims?). Adding to the confusion is that we can’t take any statements from anybody involved as reliable. As I recall, Shvarts changed her story somewhat, and the university acted in what it thought would be the safest way possible—first by calling it a hoax and claiming that she would deny it, and that this denial was itself an element of her project, and then eventually by not allowing it to be shown.

#12’s view—that one way or another, it’s worthless crap—misses what’s at stake in this ambiguity, and what’s really interesting, on the one hand, and unfortunate on the other, about this whole thing. Interesting because she was able to draw attention—mine, at least—to how people react to certain kinds of ambiguity, but unfortunate in that it didn’t draw attention to the ambiguities she claimed to be interested in (i.e., with respect to how we understand the body). But of course, we don’t really *know* if that’s what she was interested in at all.

So, I don’t know what I think about all this. But I’m pretty sure I disagree with the view that we shouldn’t (re)visit the incident.

Worthless tripe? Is Salvador Dali's experiment with "smoke" as art worthless tripe? The Virgin Mary painting or sculpture made from cow dung, worthless tripe? The cadavers marinated in polyethylene and cut into sections for exhibit worthless tripe?

Art defines and evaluates the Age we are attempting to live in before we get there so we can decide whether or not we wish to continue on the journey. Ms. Schvartz monstrosity fits that definition.

So does Picassos fractured nude descending a staircase or d\Dali's melting watches and groaning crucifixes or Mr 15 Minutes of Fame's canvasses of Campbell's Soup Cans.

#18 seems to be responding to #17, but #17 isn't calling the piece worthless tripe at all. #12 is.

This is what #17 said about #12 quoting same with a "tripe" remark:

#12 more or less sums the question up, though not without including his or her own value judgments: “If what she did was real, then it's deviant and destructive behavior, which hardly qualifies as art. If it was a hoax, then its [sic] just vaseline, plastic, and red dye #3 posing as disgusting subject matter. Either way, it's sensationalistic, offensive tripe.”

"The Virgin Mary painting or sculpture made from cow dung, worthless tripe?"

Are you really asking this rhetorical question with the expectation that we would all respond in the negative?

Wow.

#17 is trying to sum up the question of whether it was "real" or a "hoax," and quotes #12 to get that question across. In so doing, #17 *also* notes that #12 is imposing his or her value judgments on the real/hoax question. The "tripe" remark is a direct quotation from #12's comment, evidence of #12's--not #17's--value judgment.

17 says 12 "sums up the qustion" and quotes 12 as saying "either way it is "sensationalistic offensive tripe".

Recent Alum and many other respondents here have a rather limited and suffocating vision of art. Stuffy---definitely OLD Blue (gilt frames and marble and ladies coming and going, speaking of Michaelangeloing). Tedious, country club chatter.

Why would 17 not simply say "sums it up" instead of "sums it up WELL" [my emphasis]? Why would 17 not OMIT the words "sensationalistic, offensive tripe" if 17 were MERELY trying to sum up? It is clearly a value laden 17 speaking not a quasi-objective voice.

#24, *please* read more carefully.

#17 does NOT write "sums it up WELL," as you claim it does. Here's what #17 says--copied and pasted: "#12 more or less sums the question up, though not without including his or her own value judgments..." #17 does not omit the words "sensationalist, offensive tripe" because #17 wants to show the evidence that #12 is making value judgments.

In fact, #17 goes on to CRITICIZE #12's view: "#12’s view—that one way or another, it’s worthless crap—misses what’s at stake in this ambiguity, and what’s really interesting, on the one hand, and unfortunate on the other, about this whole thing. "

Quite right. Stand corrected. "More or less sums up the queston" seems gratuitous though. Sums it up with shrillness bordering on hysteria.

It seems IMPOSSIBLE that art generated by a male could produce such an intense reaction. (Exception: Stravinsky's Rite of Spring created a near riot in the audience). Let's change that to "art generated by a male in 2009"

Indeed--12's summing up of the hoax/real problem unfairly condemns the project out of hand.

The thing that seems to arise from the hoax/real confusion, is an unanswered question of precisely where the artwork is "located"--was the project what she said it was (inseminating herself, bleeding into a cup, etc. etc.)? OR, was her project in the *claim* that she did it, and not the act?

Or was OUR reaction to it the actual Art work similar to John Cage's 9 minutes of silence at a piano keyboard?

Indeed!

4'33, though.

4'33? I do not get the allusion.

4' 33" -- 4 minutes and 33 seconds --is the John Cage piece.

4' 33" -- 4 minutes and 33 seconds --is the John Cage piece.

Surely there is an accepted shorthand for noting minutes and seconds which doesn't confuse them with feet and inches
(4'33" 4m 33s?)

It's a bit confusing, yes. Running the numbers through a Google search gives you 4' 33" (for whatever that's worth).

I'm surprised no one has understood it, yet. This comment board alone is proof of Shvarts' brilliance as an artist.

I agree. It ought to be published somewhere.

PS:
I note that at 34 it is tied for most responses with "The Evolution of Tap Night". That fact alone says volumes about Old Blue v. New Blue or perhaps Society v. Art---as does this Comment Board's give-and-take itself.