Letters to the Editor
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But is it art?
Once again, I don't have time to read the whole thread at work.
Let me just say that I married an art major, and my husband has often remarked about how art students rely on creating "controversy" and making a big "statement" to make up for a general lack of talent and skill. Fortunately for him, he had professors that recognized these "statement" types of pieces for the bullshit that they are.
That being said, the whole thing really sounded like a hoax to me, at least I hope it is. Wouldn't the doctor performing the artificial insemination notice that she was coming back for repeat procedures unusually frequently? It's not like banked sperm is that easy to come by.
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Punk'd!!
Well, color me eight shades of red. I swallowed the story whole... did anybody tell Ms. Shvarts April Fool's was almost three weeks ago? If her point was to shock people that's she'd actually do that to her body, or making a statement about reproductive rights... well, I'm not sure WHAT her point was, frankly. If you were a teacher forced to grade on a pass-fail system, what grade would you give her?
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@ Allie: since when is abortion killing at all?
I've rethought my previous statements: I thought that abortion wasn't "killing" at all. The pro-choice crowd, at least, (I think) thinks that an embryo isn't even life to be killed. So I don't know if the analogy with the homicide/manslaughter/murder of born humans is even correct.
I always that the pro-choice position is that a woman shouldn't justify her abortion: she can have it for a "good" reason (rape, incest, etc) or a "bad" reason (would ruin her career). I don't think that the latter is bad, but many people do think it's a worse reason than other reasons.
In any case, the whole point of American abortion laws is that it's her private choice if and why, and no one can impeach her right to an abortion because her reason is insufficiently "good."
Would you judge poorly a woman who has 4 abortions for the "worst" reasons, like "i'm just irresponsible" or "this is my preferred method of preventing having babies"? I wouldn't. That's the whole point of choice, IMHO. And to me, choice encompasses even getting pregnant just to abort (for whatever reason the woman wants to do that). Anything else, to me, smacks of denying women full rights and responsibility over their own bodies -- a step backwards, in other words.
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After Manzoni it is no longer as easy to epater les bourgeois as it used to be.
Another "first" from the famed/infamous "sixties":
It is 1961, Piero Manzoni stuffs his exrement into bottles, signs them, numbers them and names them "La merde de l'artist".
Price: the shit's weight in gold. The little bottles are iconic pieces or modern art.
For any rational person it would mean the final discreditation of modern art but there are a very large number of irrational people, and they will happily think that sideway-placed urinals or, as in this case, menstrual fluid soaked into bedsheets, ONCE EXHIBITED AS ART, would ipso facto make them artists and with that lift them above the fray of everyday people.
To quote another world class swindler, Christo: "art is what an artist does". Be it bloody bedsheets, shit, or sidewsays placed urinals. But how do we know that an artist did it? We know it because the piece was put on display at an art exhibit. And an art exhibit is what an artist calls an art exhibit. Circular, but effective.
The same bedsheets in your hamper at home or the same sideways placed urinal at a construction site are not art because they are not at an exhibition.
Now if you're some everyday bloke, you are not supposed to understand all this - and it is the very understanding of that will set the "artist" apart from everyday blokedom. And being apart from everyday blokedom has been glorified for such a long time that it became the de facto norm and thus, paradoxically, the mainstream.
So little miss college student, as she is desperately trying to shock the bourgeoisie, coached no doubt by her art teachers, is just one from their ranks indeed.
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Art Students Crap
"Why are art students so obsessed with bodily excretions?"
Simple, quick answer: for the same reason punk was popular, tattoos still are in, there's no anti-Iraq Occupation movement to speak of, while the world around them feels as though it's crumbling. They feel like shit and don't know what to do about it but bare themselves in the rawest form as protest.
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Think again, LeCastor
You wrote: "I thought that abortion wasn't "killing" at all. The pro-choice crowd, at least, (I think) thinks that an embryo isn't even life to be killed."
Personally, I think that abortion is the killing of a life; in the same way that I feel sadness when I see a broken robin's egg on the ground, I feel sadness for the life that is ended in an abortion. However -- and I wrote this earlier -- I do not give that life, whatever it is, equal rights with the life of the woman within which it lives, and that is why I will always be firmly pro-choice.
For that reason, I was aghast at this student's "art" project, hoax or not, and I do have some contempt for women who have abortion after abortion rather than use birth control. It's also the reason I have great sympathy for people who are anti-abortion because they sincerely believe that a helpless life is being forcibly ended. However, that does not stop me from being pro-choice.
I don't think that I'm alone in my viewss among the pro-choice.
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re: LeCastor
Defending absolutely a woman's right to make her own decisions doesn't mean believing that all women will make good decisions.
I think many religions are transparently idiotic. However, I fully support the right of people to choose their own religion.
How is this hard to understand?
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@ DurianJoe, Allie
Fair enough, reasonable minds can disagree. I think the point of the project was to provoke exactly these kinds of questions and this kind of debate, and therefore, I think it's more than just disgusting, I think it's a pretty interesting project.
Being the radical pro-choicer that I am (I personally know people who've had 4 abortions, and I think it's totally okay [and no, it's not me]), I don't think there's anything ethically wrong with this project, since she only affected her own body.