Yale Daily News

Say it with me now: LYING IS NOT ART.

With all this talk about academic freedom, we've forgotten that there's also such a thing as academic integrity.

Wait...I'm pretty sure most art is precisely "lying".

Isn't an armless statue or a Picasso painting just a lie about the human body? Isn't narrative fiction just really good written lies? Or song lyrics? Shvarts's lie just made people really, really uncomfortable, and that (as Gray writes) is what made it so brilliant.

#2:
No, art is not lying. Art is REPRESENTATIONAL. There is a distinction between the art piece and whatever the artist wants to say. Picasso never said those were actual disfigured bodies in his paintings nor Praxiteles insist that yup, that was Venus right before your very eyes.
The great mistake of "conceptual art" has been to assume that the message is more important than the piece of art.
It thus becomes nothing more than social commentary parasitically donning the mantle of "Art" so you pay attention to an otherwise insufferable bore.
In the case of Ms Schvartz, the value of her piece depended on a lot of bombast surrounding not an unpleasant truth, but a foul lie. She wanted the University to perpetrate a lie for the sake of "Art" and "Discussion", and the University understandably refused. The University is, after all, dedicated to the pursuit of truth.

Art can be whatever it wants to be.

The question is: does all art deserve academic credit at one of the nation's most prestigious Universities?

Supposedly, Yale holds itself to higher standards than the University of Phoenix.

Granting a degree to this charlatan - who has not performed any true academic work or achieved any new knowledge with this senior project - would undermine centuries of established protocol at the University.

If this is acceptable as credit-worthy academic work, then what about someone attempting 'controversial' art that is racist? sexist? anti-semitic? homophobic?

If everything is considered acceptable - nothing can be considered of value. And the institution will fail.

If the University allows Miss Shvarts to graduate, it will send a signal to all students that it doesn't care about academic study, work ethic and true scientific inquiry. This may be the most intellectually lazy effort ever to come out of Yale.

What have we learned?
1) Abortion is controversial
2) Art is anything the artist wants
3) People get upset at controversial art
4) The internet allows people to share their opinions faster than other media
5) College newspapers print stories as fact without doing real research

Roe vs. Wade created #1.
The dung-laden Virgin Mary exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum taught us 2-3. Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Little Green Footballs exemplify number 4. Number 5 is a given.

There is nothing to be learned from this. BAD ART. BAD ACADEMIC WORK. The girl should FAIL. See you in the fall Aliza.

#3:

So, from your comment, I assume you support the project if she did, in fact, inseminate herself?

Also, your differentiation between "lying" and "representing" is mostly semantics. And the fact that, in some art, the message supersedes the actual piece sounds like a good thing to me. Or are you saying that we should hold the piece of paint or plaster in higher regard than the thought-provoking discussion it might arouse?

"I don’t find menstrual fluid beautiful."

Too bad. It exists as a part of women's bodies. It's not there for your enjoyment, critique, acceptance or rejection. If you still think your opinion of her body & its functioning MATTERS, you've missed a crucial part of the piece.

#5
I will give you a piece of advice that one of my supervising surgeons in residency training (where lives, not words, are on the line) gave me: "When you assume, you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me".
You assumption made an ass out of you for being flat out wrong, and me for creating the impression that I would support Ms. Schvartz's project, which is, as Professor(#4) succintly put it: BAD ART. BAD ACADEMIC WORK.
No, the difference between lying and representing is not semantics, that's why you go to a University, to learn the meaning of words and how to use them, as you well said, "precisely". Alternately, you may elect to consult a dictionary. Otherwise, dialogue and discussion become meaningless, since ultimately, all words are related in some way semantically, and you can take anything to mean whatever.
But since we're on the subject of what the relationship between lying and representing is, it more appropriate to link the word "lying" to "MISrepresenting" than to "representing". Unless, of course, you are the
Queen of Hearts and we're in Alice's Wonderland, where lying, representing, and misrepresenting are all the same because you declare them to be SEMANTICS!
As to "the fact that, in some art, the message supersedes the actual piece sounds like a good thing to me."...
No, I am not saying we should hold any piece of paint or plaster in higher regard. But some well constructed pieces of paint or plaster supersede the message. It is not that we hold it higher regard, rather IT HOLDS US, many generations of humans, in thrall long after the original message is lost.
Whatever the message that surrounded the creation of the paintings at the caves of Lascaux is long vanished, yet the art stands there, tens of thousands of years later, still filling us with awe.
The "some art" you refer to where the message supersedes the actual piece is nothing but a stage prop to "arouse thought provoking discussion". It is propaganda (propagate the agenda). But once the message becomes outdated...Think of past examples such as "Reefer Madness", or Russian post WW2 movies.
ART speaks for itself.