Posted by Amanda Marcotte April 18, 2008 in Asides, Art
Aliza Shvarts’ little hoax-art is really doing a bang-up job of compelling people to indulge their misogyny. Check out the comments at Alternet. Everyone is immediately “diagnosing” her as “attention-seeking”. Which says more about society’s expectations of female behavior—that women are best seen and not heard—than about her mental health.
At least she’s making a political statement. G.G. Allin was just an asshole, he was openly violent towards others, and I still have never heard him diagnosed as “attention-seeking”.
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I for one am defending her and her art. (it maybe crappy, but hey… it’s her art)
The rest of the planet just have to deal with what she has to say. She is not hurting anybody, too bad if what she says isn’t pleasant.
If a theory collapse just because an art student makes a statement, that theory is so flimsy, its time to find new one.
Isn’t it your job to be “attention-seeking” if you’re an artist?
This whole thing underscores a lot of the Guerrilla Girls’ points about who is allowed to be taken seriously as an artist in our culture, and to what extent, and what makes something legitimate ‘high art’.
Some people have bullshit detectors. Ms. Shvarts has done gone and built herself a bullshit illuminator!
Forget art … cut her an engineering degree for creating an artistic device that flushes out the mysogyny in our midst!
As for all the allegations about her questionable judgement, naivetee, etc., well, sheesh. She’s an undergraduate art student! All of that is in her job description!
All artists ARE “attention-seeking”. While G.G. Allin was not my cup of tea, I think you would definitely have to describe him as “attention-seeking”.
RE: This particulatr artist, I would use the cliche that art is in the eye of the beholder. My wife & I have argued many times about what should be considered art. While I can appreciate someone’s “art”, I may not want to display it around the house.
While I can appreciate someone’s “art”, I may not want to display it around the house.
Fortunately, I’m not one of the may women with extreme menses that could easly say that her work WOULD match their sofa!
Most art like this is not actually meant to be displayed in someone’s home. In fact, the real problem with performance art isn’t so much that it’s ‘not art’ or ‘bad art’ but that you can’t really make any money doing it, unless you either get mega-big or are the best grant writer in the world.
Cool! One of the few subjects on which we agree.
It’s more than just a little amusing to see poster after poster tripping over himself to point out how Shvarts “just wants attention!11!!!!1!!1”
Our culture is obsessed with celebrity and oddity. Not only do we embrace these things, but a lot of people actively seek them out. Ordinary folks want to speak with celebrities. They want to BE celebrities – even if their only claim to fame is a recurring role as the Naked Cowboy on Howard Stern’s TV show.
The “Jackass” franchise is based solely on attention-seeking by men who’ll endanger and even mutilate themselves to achieve that end. YouTube is filled with imitators.
And despite all this, the worst thing most of those posters can say about Shvarts – and they perceive it as the ultimate insult in this context – is that she is an attention-seeker.
They want to BE celebrities – even if their only claim to fame is a recurring role as the Naked Cowboy on Howard Stern’s TV show.
It’s not so much that I think Shvarts wants to be famous, but she wants to be a successful artist.
And half the battle, there, is selling yourself. In other words, seeking attention.
Go to an art opening, and look around. Notice that 98% of people in the room are seeking the attention of anyone else there who might happen to be a collector, curator, dealer, gallery owner, etc. etc. Because that is how the game is played.
I was just about to say that myself! Criticising an artist for being attention-seeking is like criticising a baker for making bread.
“I mean, I really love that Baker, but damn, does he have to make BREAD all the time?”
*sigh* but then, we are talking about the wingnuts here, so since when has reality had anything to do with any decision they make or thing they say.
And personally, not my thing in terms of art, but then I’ve always been more of a impressionist/neo-impressionist kind of woman. But the thing is, I don’t somehow magically feel like my opinion on art should be the only one that counts.
It’s not so much that I think Shvarts wants to be famous, but she wants to be a successful artist.
Oh, I agree. And I hope she gets her wish, too.
I find it fascinating – genuinely intriguing – that, although Shvarts didn’t actually mutilate or endanger herself, people are reacting as if she did something terrible. Their response to her goes well beyond that which would be expected if they merely believed she was an unworthy artist seeking undeserved attention through shock tactics.
That’s why I brought up “Jackass” in particular. Unless I’m mistaken, the guys on that show really do endanger (and even disfigure) themselves for the sake of entertainment. Their antics elicit laughter and gasps of admiration: “OMG! They’re craaazy.”
Her antics, which amount to nothing more than a shocking hoax, elicit responses of, “She sounds like she has a serious personality disorder, and should get help.” Their only evidence for this armchair diagnosis: that she sought attention by merely CLAIMING to have endangered herself for the sake of art.
If I were the one grading her on this assignment, she’d get an A+. I haven’t been this taken aback by the public response to art since Libera’s “LEGO concentration camp” display.
Apparently, for the wingers a hoax (is art a hoax?) that involves fake menses warrants a flip-out, but a hoax that sends us to war is fine and dandy.
For myself, performance art … eh. Anyone read/listen to David Sedaris’ account of his stint with performance art when he was using a lot of meth? Good stuff.
Attention seeking? In Art School? Reeeeeally?
Attention seeking? In Art School?
Where is my fainting couch?!
amanda, my sentiments exactly.
i’d give her an A+ if i were her adviser, and not just for getting so much controversy and attention. i think the directions her piece can take are way more expansive than most people originally contemplated when the story broke. i’m really intrigued by the notion of her creating this story that may be true or partly true or false and the life it takes of its own compared to the actual facts of the story, about aborting potential life, perhaps repeatedly.
she seems like she’s very perceptive and i expect her to do well in the art world if she’s coming up with stuff like this, and executing it so well at this age.
“Apparently, for the wingers a hoax (is art a hoax?) that involves fake menses warrants a flip-out, but a hoax that sends us to war is fine and dandy.”
Hey, now lets be fair. If fake menses was being used to humiliate a “detainee” at Guantanamo into making up some bogus terror plot to get his “interrogators” to stop, the wingnuts would be perfectly okay - in fact they would be very encouraging.
So if fake menses can made to serve the cause of freedom, cool!…
I haven’t gone to look at the Alternet comments but I have read some more about the er, artist, at Feministing. Um. Well, if everybody’s saying she didn’t do anything illegal or even so much as morally wrong and to get off her case based on that, I totally 100% agree. However…anybody who thinks that she was actually having abortions month after month…from what I’ve read, she sincerely thought she was knocking herself up and then aborting and oooh, Teh ART of it all! (”Oh, the HUMANITY!”) Yeah. Not too bright, huh..? Also, I am deeply uninterested in anybody else’s bodily waste products. I’m not interested in my OWN bodily waste products. Rebellion against prudish society mores can be a form and even a medium of art. Playing with your piss, shit, vomit, bile, sweat, menstrual flow–fingerpainting with it, writing your name in the snow with thit, videotaping it running out of your body…sorry. Call me a Phillistine! But that ain’t art. It’s boring, strange, probably smells questionable and may even (depending on the waste product) be a real health risk.
“She sounds like she has a serious personality disorder, and should get help.”
This is part of what I meant when I described my initial reaction to hearing about this in the other thread. My first thought wasn’t whether it was interesting art or not, but “she’s crazy”, “she’s going to ruin her health”, etc. While male artists have been doing things that ruin their health and mark them as potentially pathological for centuries.
The latest news on fark is that Shvarts claims she did in fact have multiple abortions. I still don’t believe her, but a lot of folks will. There are even a few in the follow-up comments who speak of the ‘Yale Conspiracy.’
This is so good it MUST be fattening. Here’s a sampling from the first 30 or so posts:
BubbleWrap sez: “Daddy Didn’t Love Me-gate continues…”
SchlingFo disagrees: “I believe this is Daddy Loved Me In The Wrong Place-gate.”
EsteeFlwrPot sez: “What an attention whore. She should take her shiat elsewhere.”
Akugyaku sez: “Who cares what this biatch says.”
Ptelg sez: “NO! The hoax was the medium! What genius! Unto itself is speaks volumes about the current… Aw fark it, she’s worse than a cam-whore.”
Shakespeare’s Monkey sez: “his person seems to be an open minded boundary pushing type. I’ll bet we could put on a performance piece called, “The Tea Bag.” that would really engage the audience. /that or it’s just an excuse to slap my junk on the forehead of some dumbass art freak.”
Stickittothemaneosis sez: “Yes, I can say one thing with 100% certainty, she is a farking annoying biotch and she should inseminate herself with her own bullshiat rather than wasting our time with it.”
The following three are my favorites, for obvious reasons:
ToxicMonkee sez: “Let’s just kick the shiat out of her and call it done.”
Pooperator sez: “skank”
Lilygirl sez: “This girl needs seriously help, I say lock her up and throw away the key, we’ve got enough freaks running amok…..”
In the space of 376 posts, the word “whore” came up 15 times. The word “bitch” – or biatch, as according to the fark filter – came up 18 times. The word “attention” came up 24 times.
warhol, later in his career utilized urine in his portraits, the chemistry reacted against the paint he was using creating a new effect. warhol is considered a serious artist.
this woman utilized the products of her body in her art and yet even on feminist websites i see her denigrated, so thank you amanda for not taking that route.
the last piece i did in my art course was a reaction to learning over and over and over about male artists and their greatness while women are relegated as footnotes or moreso objectified or dismembered within the image. max ernst was the last straw. this phrase started running through my head again and again “a man could ejaculate on a canvas and call it art”
and he could, and nobody would question his mental health.
after reading this artists op-ed regarding her piece, im even more impressed. i kno if she were to do a show near me, i would clamour to go.
Did any prominent conservatives ever comment on GG Allin? Because if they did, I want to read it. Always funny to watch people’s heads explode.
I’ve seen a lot of barely disguised misogyny come tumbling out of people on the internet that I, frankly, expected a hell of a lot better from.
she sincerely thought she was knocking herself up and then aborting and oooh, Teh ART of it all! (”Oh, the HUMANITY!”) Yeah. Not too bright, huh..?
Having read her statement, I don’t think she was saying she honestly thought she was pregnant and honestly thought she was aborting the pregnancies, but that the whole project was designed to play up the ambiguity between ordinary menstruation in a sexually active woman and aborting/miscarrying a zygote. And, yes, there are a lot of ambiguities there, and I happen to think that said ambiguities are worth exploring via art.
Call me a Phillistine! But that ain’t art. It’s boring, strange, probably smells questionable and may even (depending on the waste product) be a real health risk.
Well, OK. But the curators at most mainstream contemporary art museums have been disagreeing with you for at least the past 20 years.
I don’t feel sorry for her because wingnuts are pissed-off — that’s exactly the reaction she wanted, and she got it in spades. Bravo! Ah, to be young again, when thought itself was thrilling, dangerous, blasphemous. Instead, I’m a glib, jaded old hack.
As she matures in her craft, I should hope she’ll use her admirable energy in service of better concepts, though. I mean, come on.
While G.G. Allin was not my cup of tea, I think you would definitely have to describe him as “attention-seeking”.
I met the bastard, definitely an attention seeker. And a moronic douchebag of epic proportion. And (he and) his music sucked ass.
Hell, I’ve had Kathleen Lynch’s urine flung at me out of a whiffleball bat … but Beme Seed was GOOD!
Is it possible to have a sense of humor about this “hoax”? Just reading the first few paragraphs of the Daily News story that got the brou-ha-ha going, it was hard for me to take it seriously. Sure, it’s grotesque, it cruelly plays upon the gullibility (willful gullibility, IMHO) of others, and it may very well be “playing with fire.” But couldn’t we just try responding to the folks like, say, Michelle Malkin who are making such a fuss out of it: “You’re an idiot.” I know it’s not nice, but so what? It would have been refreshing the other night if Obama or Clinton responded in the same manner to Gibson or Stephanopolous: “Is Rev. Wright as patriotic as I am? I dunno, George - are you potty-trained yet?” Why are we constantly accepting debates on idiotarian terms?
Uh, for those of you who squick over body fluids, don’t EVER attend an exhibition of medieval steelmaking, armor, etc.
Why? In order to increase the surface hardness by boosting the nitrite content, most items were quenched in the piss of young boys who had been fed lots of meat.
I kid you not.
Thing is, if Michelle Malkin called anyone an idiot, it would be funny because she’s so un-self-aware. So doesn’t compute, Kevin.
Ms Kate, Really? No shi…ummm..nevermind…
“warhol, later in his career utilized urine in his portraits, the chemistry reacted against the paint he was using creating a new effect. warhol is considered a serious artist.”
Specifically because he pissed in his paints, or because of the result of the chemical reaction of the piss in the paint? If the first, people need to get some meds, quick. And no, what’s to respect about pissing in your paints? Lazy and yep, pretty gross. Get off your ass and go buy some ammonia, urea, whatever’s in there that causes the desired effects. When I’m hungry, I probably could dig some food up out of the lunchroom trash. But yep, lazy and gross–how bout I go buy some fresh?
“this woman utilized the products of her body in her art and yet even on feminist websites i see her denigrated, so thank you amanda for not taking that route.”
Is there something holy about utilizing your waste products in your art? And do feminist websites have to worship shit if it’s female shit?
“this phrase started running through my head again and again “a man could ejaculate on a canvas and call it art”
and he could, and nobody would question his mental health.”
I wouldn’t question his mental health. (And I didn’t question hers.) I’d question his intellect, his willingness to actually do some real work and his ability to tell actual innovation from something being new only because it was too stupid for anybody else to try first. (Like I did hers.)
“Having read her statement, I don’t think she was saying she honestly thought she was pregnant and honestly thought she was aborting the pregnancies, but that the whole project was designed to play up the ambiguity between ordinary menstruation in a sexually active woman and aborting/miscarrying a zygote. And, yes, there are a lot of ambiguities there, and I happen to think that said ambiguities are worth exploring via art.”
I’ve always found the ambiguity of shit as an ideal fertilizer to grow life-sustaining crops in so many ways (seed medium, nutrient provider, insulator, etc.) contrasted with how many people it’s killed in food as a vector for E. coli to be fascinating. However, I would be unimpressed by someone who filmed turds coming out of their butt and called that an artistic exploration of said ambiguity.
“Well, OK. But the curators at most mainstream contemporary art museums have been disagreeing with you for at least the past 20 years.”
Seriously? I am out of touch. Didn’t realize that body waste art was a big movement and considered true art by the majority of art museums and critics. I’m trying to decide if I actually want more information on that or not before I ask for it.
“Uh, for those of you who squick over body fluids, don’t EVER attend an exhibition of medieval steelmaking, armor, etc.
Why? In order to increase the surface hardness by boosting the nitrite content, most items were quenched in the piss of young boys who had been fed lots of meat.”
Given that they had no other way of extracting nitrite or even knew what the hell nitrite was, this is totally understandable. If modern steel factories had their workers line up and piss into the molds, that’d be another story altogether though, right?
What pisses people off isn’t that she’s an attention seeker. What pisses them off is that she succeeded in getting their attention, and directed it towards some things they work very, very hard at not paying attention to.
Didn’t realize that body waste art was a big movement and considered true art by the majority of art museums and critics.
It’s not so much that it’s a “big movement” (hee!), but that it’s a recurring theme used by a lot of quite well-respected artists over the last few decades. The above Warhol example is one instance. There’s also a piece by Kiki Smith on display at MoMA, composed of several large silver vessels labeled with the names of bodily functions, and supposedly containing the corresponding fluids belonging to the artist (which is the first one I thought of).
That’s pretty awesome, Ms. Kate. I wonder if it ever made its way into marketing. “The hardest helmet you ever had, Sir Knight — the butcher’s son will piss on it!”
In a lot of ways, being a success in business, either as a corporate person or as an entrepreneur, means you HAVE to be an attention seeker.
So that, as a criticism of an artist (who is basically the ultimate entreprenuer), doesn’t hold water for me.
“The hardest helmet you ever had, Sir Knight — the butcher’s son will piss on it!”
My understanding is when firearms started coming into use - overlapping the era of plate armor - armorers would fire a ball at the breastplate, leaving the dent as proof of the strength of their armor. (The powder and the crudeness the long arms in early use were not up to the task of penetrating plate armor for many years).
So you’re not far off the mark…
:)
Of course it was a simulation (was the blood even hers? or even blood?). If the miscarriages / abortions had been real, the project proposal would still be percolating through the art school’s administration and Yale’s law offices, and would take so long that she might as well present it as her doctoral defense.
I have to disagree a bit here. First not all artists want attention for themselves (some are quite reclusive) and second ‘attention seeking’ is not the goal of an artist. The goal of an artist is art, which might entail getting attention but might not. If art=attention then terrorists are artists as are people who jump up when the camera is on them as are ….
A performance artist, like this woman, does seek attention as part of the art, but the fact that it gets attention does not mean it’s good art. The info is a little sparse so far, so I’m not sure if I think this is good art.
Also, I am deeply uninterested in anybody else’s bodily waste products. I’m not interested in my OWN bodily waste products.
And if people would just mind their own business, we wouldn’t have “exhibitions” such as this because they wouldn’t bother anyone or wouldn’t be deemed appropriate to talk about.
If menstruation, piss, blood, bile, etc. are not interesting, then abortion should also be the sole business of the woman who wishes. The fact that you and others react to this so strenuously says something about our society.
THAT is the performance, not the work. THAT is drawing attention to an issue, not oneself.
What pisses people off isn’t that she’s an attention seeker. What pisses them off is that she succeeded in getting their attention, and directed it towards some things they work very, very hard at not paying attention to.
DING! DING! DING! DING! DING!
At least she’s making a political statement. G.G. Allin was just an asshole, he was openly violent towards others, and I still have never heard him diagnosed as “attention-seeking”.
In the previous thread, I accused her of attention seeking, in the same vein as Andres Serrano; aversion to pretension is pretty gender-neutral.
I think there is a big difference between someone who is trangressive for the purpose of delivering a message (like, say Mapplethorpe or John Waters) and those who create art for the sake of publicity, intellectual masturbation, or shock value and then slap on a message as an afterthought. (Vincent Gallo)
I don’t see why, just because all of the Right is jumping down her throat, that it somehow validates her art or makes it be a quality piece.
Count me among those not impressed by this as a piece of art. Fascinating sociological experiment, yes. Really fun prank that freaks people the hell out as all of the best pranks should? Of course. But actual art? Not so much.
My criterion: if it were art, we would be viewing and debating the actual piece she produced, not the means of production. (Has anyone here actually gone to look at the pieces she produced for this project?) Chris Ofili produced a beautiful painting that incorporated elephant dung — he didn’t present a pile of elephant dung and claim it to be art.
I find it fascinating – genuinely intriguing – that, although Shvarts didn’t actually mutilate or endanger herself, people are reacting as if she did something terrible.
She did something about 1/5th of the women reading this are probably doing now—she menstruated. She just drew attention to it and made a point about how it’s not different, in terms of how it looks and feels, than that which has a zygote or fertilized egg floating in it.
Did she do something terrible? Well, on a fundamental level, in a sexist society, she did. Depending on how you look at it, she was a woman or at least drew attention to it without being properly ashamed of the fact. Just in the strictly physical sense of what she did. The mental side of it—well, she managed to make a lot of anti-choicers look like asses. They’re just unaware they ALWAYS look like asses.
First not all artists want attention for themselves (some are quite reclusive)
This depends how you define “artists”. If you mean any human making any work of art, anywhere, ever, then, sure. In fact it drives me nuts when people think they have a right to look over my shoulder if they see me drawing in public (usually just doodling to pass the time). But if you mean a professional artist, someone trying to make a living with their work (as we assume this woman at least wants to be, given how we heard about her), then yeah, 99.999999999999999999999% of all artists want attention. Without it, they will never get a show or a grant, sell their work, win a commission, or any of the other things that are necessary within the world of professional art.
and second ‘attention seeking’ is not the goal of an artist.
See above. It may not be their only goal, or the whole point of their work, but without the right kinds of attention you might as well be making necklaces out of macaroni for your mom. And even that requires the attention and interest of your mom. Attention seeking is part of the job description. In fact, certain theorists would say that, without an audience, it’s not art at all.
There’s a MAJOR traveling art exhibition of dead bodies, real ones, plasticized and opened up. An artist’s job is, in no small part, understanding their medium; keeping it safe is important, so going “Ew, unsanitary!” is probably unrealistic, even if real tissue is involved.
Lisa, it’s not uncommon for artists to play dumb like this in order to provoke reactions. I would bet a serious amount of money that she knows very well that she was never pregnant, and that is the point of her piece.
She is releasing this piece into a society where a significant percentage of people think preventing ovulation is abortion. Hell, by their definitions, I sneezed too hard and “aborted”. They don’t know. And that’s her point.
Also, depending on the type of art, criticizing an artist for seeking attention is more like saying “Why does the baker have to try to SELL his bread?” rather than being mad about him baking it. Which is still complaining about a person trying to earn a living doing what they love. An artist who doesn’t promote is an artist who doesn’t sell.
It travels as art in Europe, but here in the States, it’s in science museums. (Locally, it’s at the California ScienCenter right now.) So is it art in Europe, but once it crosses the ocean, it magically becomes science?
I saw the original tour, and it was definitely presented as a scientific/educational exhibit with some art pieces at the very end, not a straight art exhibit.
I for one am defending her and her art. (it maybe crappy, but hey… it’s her art)
Actually, you, and I, and everyone else are contributing to this piece. The piece itself has become a kind of pastiche on women’s bodies and their functions in society. Far more interesting then the ersatz piece itself.
I find it interesting as how many critics have ascribed a mental illness to this woman, as if all women are simply teetering on the edge of psychosis.
So is it art in Europe, but once it crosses the ocean, it magically becomes science?
To add to the hilarity, here in New York it was shown in a completely neutral space at South Street Seaport, because neither the art nor science museums would have anything to do with it (for financial reasons more than anything else, I’d guess).
Plainly, this woman is being attacked because she gored somebody’s sacred ox. It’s called being provocative. We’re not allowed to talk about such icky things, don’t you know, and we’re especially not supposed to mock the holy, holy, sacred, magic soul-bearing clumps of cells inhabiting the female hoo-hoo. And if we do cross that line, surely the only path to forgiveness is to repent our sins and embrace the magical, mystical, unquestionable purity and godliness of the female bodily fluids.
In the previous thread on this topic I called her work “bad art” - I withdraw my comment. It’s not the kind of thing I prefer, but she’s managed to stir up a conversation that is damn interesting, and kudos to her for that. I hope she doesn’t go down the road of shock art in the long term, but frankly I think she’s done a significant service by forcing the subject of bodily autonomy into the the forefront of people’s consciousness. Good on her.
Hopefully she’ll be able to go from here into doing other sorts of interesting things (menstrual blood artwork is a limited sphere, IMO).
Warhol’s conceit was an attack on art. His silk screen and mass produced paintings and other works expanded the notion of art while attacking the idea that art had value.
His point was in part about mass culture and pop culture, but the pop artists’ expansion of the definition of art was about puncturing the art world’s pretense and airs of self-importance and exclusivity.
Contemporary artists like Shvartz and other performance artists have adopted some of the developments of pop art and other modern movements, which hold that the object is secondary to the act of creation which is the real art.
For example, Jackson Pollack’s paintings are much more about the act of painting them than the thing created, a fact that has not prevented the paintings from becoming enormously valuable.
Modern performance artists eschew the creation of an object altogether. The trouble is, they eschew ideals of beauty and their statements are often callow and poorly conceived. However, what has been lost from Warhol’s sensibility is the concept of irony. Reading Shvartz’s release, you have to conclude that she takes this project and herself very seriously.
For Warhol, the point wasn’t pissing on the mercury paint.
The point was pissing on something, declaring it art, and then getting someone to validate that by paying for it. Warhol’s point is that piss is art, and therefore, art, like piss is disposable and subject to derision. Self-serious art students like Shvartz believe that if they call their piss (or feces or menstrual blood) art, then, like art, their piss will be the subject of contemplation.
For Warhol, designating piss as art indicts art. For Shvartz, or Mapplethorpe, or any number of other artists who engage in similar gross-out stunts, designating piss as art elevates piss.
If Shvartz’s abortion stunt had actually been a giant gross prank, it would have been better art than what her apparent intent, which was to encourage earnest contemplation of the idea that the possibility that the bloody cube was smeared with her abortions.
When people get angry and call her “attention seeking,” I think they are reacting to her apparent presumption that her discharges are special and worthy of exhibition and contemplation.
Hi Amanda, you know I do really get the “ambiguity” aspect of the situation and I don’t have any patience or empathy with the pearl-clutching misogyny swirling around the whole situation…I think I just deep down inside find it deeply aggravating that anybody would film emission of their own waste product and expect me to go “Wow. What art. How beautiful. What a statement.” Honestly, if I thought she had done this solely and only to be controversial and/or jolt people into a dialogue facing aspects of female reproduction they usually avoid like the plague, I might think she was pretty cool, even if I was still inclined to take a pass on viewing the “art.”
Meh, my feeling is that 99.99% of so-called art is total trash. So-called “performance art”, shock art, “found art”, whatever.
If there isn’t a single line/note/whatever in the work of the artist that demonstrates acute skill, mastery of the medium, and the results of careful practice of many long years, plus hard work, fuhggettabahtit. The artist is doing nothing more than wasting my time and demanding to be paid for his insipid scrawlings far beyond what they deserve.
I’d much rather pay $1000 dollars for a good solid patchwork quilt done by some Indiana farmwoman in the 1940s. At least it will keep me warm, and I can appreciate the pattern.
When people get angry and call her “attention seeking,” I think they are reacting to her apparent presumption that her discharges are special and worthy of exhibition and contemplation.
You know, a true attention whore slattern would have videotaped herself eating her aborted cell clumps!
For some reason, I am reminded of graffitti in the women’s room at MIT. We had these stupid dispensers for SaniBag, adorned with a nice, sterile/nubile nurse and the tag line “used by discreet women EVERYWHERE!”. The usual joke was “what do continuous women use”, but in one stall somebody asked in ink “what do indiscreet women use?” to which someone else answered “THEIR POCKETS”.
I guess indiscreet women use a cube.
IMHO the key element in “performance art” is *performance*. It is usually presented as a genre of visual art, but it’s really a subset of theater. And as a piece of theater Shvarts has succeeded in *spades*. Theater isn’t meant to sit there, to be inert and passive — it’s intended to be active and if possible interactive. Yes, not all static visual artists are attention-seeking in this way: but performers certainly are.
If you think of what Shvarts has done as *theater*, as a performance, it seems much more … reasonable. And bear in mind, that *we*, discussing it, are part of the show — our conversation is part of her performance. That’s why she deserves an A+: she found a button that made a lot of people do the monkey dance.
Considering that this kind of thing happens all the time, fertilized eggs getting expelled, this is about as offensive as the woman who paints with menstrual blood. As someone who used their own blood in various art projects, and was witch-hunted by certain christians, I don’t know, the horror just seems like squickyness more than any actual moral or ethical question. It’s her body, it’s her business.
From here, she makes a really interesting point about form and function of her body, as relates to society’s assumed ownership of it. She seems to be saying “This is me. This is mine.” and asking people to examine their reactions to how they view women and children. I think that’s a really interesting question to raise. Did she really have miscarriages? Can you call it a miscarriage? Good stuff.
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Menstrual_painting
Feel free to improve that article.
I disagree. If contend that the point of art is to communicate. What, and how you communicate, aren’t so important as getting your point across. Which she did. So from that perspective, it is “good” art. Further she raises an interesting, relevant question, so double super mega bonus.
::sigh:: I know it’s likely no one will even see this, having moved on to new topics, but I still want to share just in case.
jessilikewhoa, lord seitan sez:
“I could ejaculate better art than this!”
holy shit! further proof that every damn thought i have is just some meme landing in my thinking muscle.
i can’t stop obsessing over this piece. is there video of it online at all?
she makes me think about abortion, and duchamp’s fountain all at the same time. have i mentioned yet i really want to see this piece?
“When I’m hungry, I probably could dig some food up out of the lunchroom trash. But yep, lazy and gross–how bout I go buy some fresh?”
but what about the freegans???!!!1111!!!111!!!11
Also, I am deeply uninterested in anybody else’s bodily waste products. I’m not interested in my OWN bodily waste products. Rebellion against prudish society mores can be a form and even a medium of art. Playing with your piss, shit, vomit, bile, sweat, menstrual flow–fingerpainting with it, writing your name in the snow with thit, videotaping it running out of your body…sorry. Call me a Phillistine! But that ain’t art.
Given the buttons pushed and the range of themes that have come up in people’s reactions, I’d say it was a damned good piece of art, gross though it might be.
the pop artists’ expansion of the definition of art was about puncturing the art world’s pretense and airs of self-importance and exclusivity.
Wow, Mitchforth knows even less about art than he does about anything else.
I’m still pretty impressed that you called it.
Further, Mitchforth is an idiot who forgot that he can turn his head.
I think I just deep down inside find it deeply aggravating that anybody would film emission of their own waste product and expect me to go “Wow. What art. How beautiful. What a statement.”
If you think this is the point of art — to get you to go “how beautiful” — then it’s no wonder that you don’t have anything valid to say about this topic.
MeOW! Did I somehow offend you, dear?
I’m not stupid. You’re stupid.
““When I’m hungry, I probably could dig some food up out of the lunchroom trash. But yep, lazy and gross–how bout I go buy some fresh?”
but what about the freegans???!!!1111!!!111!!!11 ”
Supercool point. The statement it makes and the responses to the freegans may be thought-provoking, valid, interesting, and controversial. However, the mechanics of what they are doing (dumpster-diving) are not art, like haute cuisine is.
As I said above, I can appreciate it as a prank, which would be theater. And I think you’ve diagnosed the problem correctly — for some reason, “performance art” is classed as art and not theater, which has always struck me as odd. Stan Brakhage created his films by, among other things, scratching the film stock and growing mold on it, but they’re considered films, not art objects.
I know it’s splitting a pretty fine hair since theater is an art form, but I do think there’s a difference between visual arts and performance arts, and the people who try to make their theatrical productions more “artsy” by claiming they’re high art instead of theater are just being pretentious fucks.
Well, the final work is a blood-smeared cube and the videos of her menstruating in the bathtub. Even the bogus artificial insemination/herbal abortion angle has to be explained.
She wrote a really long press release explaining what she thinks the work is about, which suggests a lot of themes that aren’t really evident from observing the thing itself.
The point of art isn’t necessarily to communicate. Political art is usually pretty bad because good artists don’t necessarily have profound political opinions. I think a lot of political art is intellectually one-dimensional.
Also, generally, I believe political speech is effective when it’s persuasive. I think anyone who was trying to make progress on any of the issues name-checked in Shvartz’s press release would want to get as far away from this thing as possible.
However, the mechanics of what they are doing (dumpster-diving) are not art, like haute cuisine is.
Why?
What if some totally rad professional chef from a fancy restaurant acquired ingredients via dumpster diving and gave them ‘haute cuisine’ treatment? Would the source of the food invalidate its claims to haute cuisine? What makes something haute cuisine, anyway, aside from the price tag and the idea that it was cooked by Someone Important ™ ?
Food is food, no?
which suggests a lot of themes that aren’t really evident from observing the thing itself.
1. How many of the folks discussing her work have actually observed the object in question? I would guess that she issued a press statement in the wake of becoming a household name before the show had even opened. A show which is in New Haven, CT, not exactly the most accessible world stage for the debut of important new art (it’s not like this is being shown in the Whitney Biennial, or she just got a solo show at a major museum). She was explaining her work for the benefit of the millions of people who will not be seeing it anytime soon, not because everyone saw it but it was too complicated to understand.
2. Srsly, dude. The ‘hoax’ is the artwork, here. Which makes the press release a part of the piece, not an explanation of the piece per se. I have to say that I rolled my eyes upon reading the statement, because it reads just like twee artists’ statements everywhere (therein lies its genius, imo). Also because I agree that artists who have to spend a lot of time explaining their work probably need to be putting that energy in making the work speak for itself. But see above. The press release is not a supporting document, it is part of the work.
The point of art isn’t necessarily to communicate.
LOLZ.
It’s not an important work, first of all. If you go to any edgy art gallery or museum, there’s plenty of stuff that’s better than this that nobody is paying attention to. The only thing about this that is newsworthy is that the notion that she would get pregnant, abort, and smear the abortion on her art project is offensive to most people and gross and weird to everyone else.
She has disconnected her phone, pulled herself off of Myspace and gone into hiding. She never expected the story to get picked up by Drudge from the Yale Daily News, and she probably never intended to reveal that the artificial insemination/abortion aspect was fake.
I think she is, in fact, a twee artist and she probably has been so suffused in the bizarre world of performance art that she was unaware of just how profoundly offensive her conceit was.
It’s not an important work, first of all.
So? There’s a rule that if you’re an artist, and you make some art that is not of Mona Lisa caliber, you’re not allowed to show anyone or talk about it or tell anyone what you were trying to achieve, lest somebody find out that you’re not the second coming of Picasso?
pulled herself off of Myspace
Ohnoes! Teh Horror!
Seriously, dude, I pulled myself off Myspace like a year ago because I was really bored with it. And nobody thought I was trying to disassociate myself from something stupid I did that I didn’t want anyone to know about.
Mitchforth April 19, 2008 at 2:34 pm
It’s not an important work, first of all. If you go to any edgy art gallery or museum, there’s plenty of stuff that’s better than this that nobody is paying attention to. The only thing about this that is newsworthy is that the notion that she would get pregnant, abort, and smear the abortion on her art project is offensive to most people and gross and weird to everyone else.
But how can something be “important” if not being communicated? All object has to start showing up from somewhere right? And there is no “instant” recognition that a work will be “important”. Only through discussion and talk finally public can decide if a work is important.
using your logic, no new art work can possibly be “important” specially those that breaks the convention of analyzing the importance of an art.
“However, the mechanics of what they are doing (dumpster-diving) are not art, like haute cuisine is.
Why?
What if some totally rad professional chef from a fancy restaurant acquired ingredients via dumpster diving and gave them ‘haute cuisine’ treatment? Would the source of the food invalidate its claims to haute cuisine? What makes something haute cuisine, anyway, aside from the price tag and the idea that it was cooked by Someone Important ™ ?
Food is food, no?”
Yearghh!! And folks here have been acting like I’M the Phillistine! scuse me while I recover from my faint…I hope you speak from the ignorance of never having tasted true haute cuisine. Cause if you HAVE you are a BARBARIAN!!!
:) Just kidding. Not everybody’s into the taste, presentation and quality of food as an art form. For some, it’s organic fuel, no more, no less, and that’s fine. Diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks, etc.
If you’re interested, though: Haute cuisine is not defined by its cost (though that’s usually high, just like it is for the majority of the greatest art in other forms) or by the fame or lack thereof of its artists (though of course the top of the field is famous, again, as in other fields of art). It’s all about the quality of the ingredients (that’s why, unless you’re very picky about which dumpsters you go diving in, you’re unlikely to find ones that could supply you with the freshness and care in creation of material you need to produce it), the precision of the preparation, the sensual beauty (sensual in terms of sight, smell, taste, texture and sometimes even sound) of the presentation.
I don’t think the sculptural part of the work has been exhibited yet. AFAIK, Shvarts is still in the pre-exhibition performance phase.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/dining/26nside.html?_r=1&ref=dining&oref=slogin
Shvarts has gone into hiding because she’s a target for domestic terrorism–you know, from those “pro-lifers” who plant clinic bombs and attack abortion providers. I know a doc in Vancouver who got sniped with a high-powered rifle at his own kitchen table by shooter who’s at large to this day. (The doctor survived and eventually walked again, thankfully.)
Of course Shvarts has taken her Facebook page down. At this point, she’d be endangering herself and her contacts by leaving up any scraps of personal information. It’s not just about mean email from Michelle Malkin gallery or even threats from the Storm Front crowd.
Where was her academic adviser when this project was hatched. I’m assuming that the adviser knew that her student was going to claim to have terminated pregnancies for art’s sake.
It’s all about the quality of the ingredients (that’s why, unless you’re very picky about which dumpsters you go diving in, you’re unlikely to find ones that could supply you with the freshness and care in creation of material you need to produce it)
*giggle*
Wait, you’re one of those people who’s willing to pay $50 for an entree as long as the menu specifies that this salmon was caught in a creek in Washington State? And you think performance art is woo?
I love fancy-pants restaurants as much as the next girl, but truly, there isn’t much difference in the quality ingredients used at most ‘haute cuisine’ restaurants and what you can liberate from the dumpster of a good grocery store. Arugula is arugula is arugula. Thomas Keller touching it does not make it, like, ‘ur-arugula’ or something.
“*giggle*
Wait, you’re one of those people who’s willing to pay $50 for an entree as long as the menu specifies that this salmon was caught in a creek in Washington State? And you think performance art is woo?”
Nah, I’m just one of those people who can tell the difference between ceviche using actual fresh-caught seafood and fresh-squeezed lime juice and ceviche made with frozen crap and lime juice from those little green plastic container thingies. Not everybody has Teh Tastebuds, though. I understand.
Whoever said I didn’t like performance art? I said I didn’t consider bodily waste products “art.” C’mon, you can’t seriously expect me to believe that a prerequisite for all performance art is that it contain feces, piss or menstrual clots..?
“I love fancy-pants restaurants as much as the next girl, but truly, there isn’t much difference in the quality ingredients used at most ‘haute cuisine’ restaurants and what you can liberate from the dumpster of a good grocery store.”
(sigh) like most culinary barbarians, you can’t tell the difference between truly excellent food and just-okay food, and have decided since YOU can’t taste a difference, why, there must not BE a difference and those so-called “chefs” must be putting on snotty airs to trick you into spending more money, by Gad!! Clearly even the presentation aspect of the art has gone clean over your head…which as I said before, is okay. Some people are tone-deaf, too.
Condescending, much?
There is no real difference between the arugula you can get behind Whole Foods and the arugula that comes off the Manhattan Fruit Exchange truck in front of a posh restaurant. They don’t have trademarks on special varietals only grown on exclusive farms (despite what the menu might imply).
Most high-falutin restaurants use the same distributors as their slightly more down-market cousins. The tarte tatin at Atelier Joel Robuchon is made with the same apples as the tarte tatin at the French bistro I can afford, which are the same apples I can buy at their distributor’s Chelsea Market outlet and bake into my own tarte tatin at home. The difference is in the preparation and presentation, not the apples themselves.
Lisa KS April 19, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Whoever said I didn’t like performance art? I said I didn’t consider bodily waste products “art.” C’mon, you can’t seriously expect me to believe that a prerequisite for all performance art is that it contain feces, piss or menstrual clots..?”
wait until you find out how they made coloring paste before modern synthetic oil paint. How do you think the Italian masters made those red and blue color? Up until dutch masters even. (some animal and plant product involved. rather icky…)
“Condescending, much?”
Well yes. In response to yours. I s’pose I shoulda been above that, but apparently I’m so not. I’m…ashamed!
I have no arguments with your statements about arugula, though I’m puzzled by your apparent belief that arugula is a good across-the-board example of how quality can vary among foodstuffs. A far better one would be seafood. And I can only take your echoing of two of my three criteria for haute cuisine, preparation and presentation, as a masterly concession to my point. Thanks!
seafood = global mercury pollution. woo … ( I think i should start marketing portable mass spectrometry, just to flip organic freaks … (I like organic, but some people are taking it way too seriously)
on cooking ingredient. I suppose all foods are complex chemicals containing mostly organic molecules that can degrade. How they degrade are actually important. For eg. the difference between fresh egg and rotten egg can be quite dangerous. microbes. We develop tons of mechanism to detect these sort of organic material changes. Anything with sugar and protein, we are probably quite sensitive. (eg. expensive wine is just basically rotting fruit juice)
Most synthetic inorganic material probably has no taste, there is no natural need to detect them.
“wait until you find out how they made coloring paste before modern synthetic oil paint. How do you think the Italian masters made those red and blue color? Up until dutch masters even. (some animal and plant product involved. rather icky…)”
Already covered in a previous post!
Well, Lisa, opoponax’s original contention was that haute cuisine could be created using dumpstered ingredients. This means that technique and presentation were part of her original statement. Thus, your statement that the three important points were ingredients, preparation, and presentation was already agreeing with her on two out of three points. You can hardly say that she was “conceding” when she pointed out that you’d agreed with her in the first place. In fact, the whole argument was about the “ingredients” part, so you’re being a bit disingenuous at #83.
To return to the original point, however: I really don’t at all agree with all the people bagging on this art project. I think it’s a masterly hoax, which exposes lots and lots of uncomfortable things that no-one wants to think about. I love it, and honestly I don’t give a flying fuck whether or not it’s her ACTUAL menses or whether she ACTUALLY took a shot at getting pregnant. The point of art, as far as I’m concerned, is to make you have a strong reaction and then have to think about it. This project, by that criterion, wins at life.
Well murcielago, I would direct you to reread opponax’s original statement regarding “haute cuisine,” which was:
“What makes something haute cuisine, anyway, aside from the price tag and the idea that it was cooked by Someone Important ™ ?”
Not sure how you’re getting “technique” and “presentation” out of “price tag” and “cooked by Someone Important(tm).”
And Amanda’s probably tired of having her thread hijacked by a sniping discussion of haute cuisine, so I’m gonna be good now and quit.