Aliza Shvarts Creates 'Abortion' Art and a Controversy

Updated on April 18, 8:21 a.m.: The controversy surrounding a Yale University student's abortion themed art project took a strange turn when a university spokesperson pronounced the whole thing a hoax. Aliza Svartz, the student in question, denied that her project was a hoax.

Aliza Svartz sparked a controversy that spread through the blogosphere and the mainstream media when she told a student newspaper that her senior art project would consist of a documentary of her impregnating herself through artificial insemination and then taking an abortion drug. The video would be displayed with a sample of the student's own blood.

The Yale University spokesperson announced that Svartz had been confronted by three university officials, including two deans. Under questioning Svartz admitted that the whole art project was a hoax or, as she preferred to put it, "performance art."

Aliza Svartz disputes the characterization of her art project as a "hoax." Svartz claims now that she did try to artificially inseminate herself, but now admits that she is uncertain whether she became pregnant during any of these attempts. She used abortifacient herbs to induce bleeding, but now admits to uncertainty as to whether any miscarriages occurred.

Reaction across the blogosphere was swift and direct. Typical was that of Hotair.Com's Allahpundit, who sarcastically suggested, "I guess she showed the heteronormative patriarchy a thing or two about overreacting to, um, serial abortion as a form of highbrow entertainment."
No word yet as to whether the "art piece" will actually be put on display.

Original story, April 17, 11:49 a.m.:

The definition of what constitutes "art" keeps being pushed into regions of absurdity and grossness. No greater example of such exist than an art project by a Yale student named Aliza Shvarts who documented how she artificially inseminated herself and then used abortifacient drugs to end her pregnancy.

The documentary video of how she got pregnant and then got an abortion several times, as well as preserved samples of her own blood, constitutes Aliza Shvarts' senior art project. Ms. Shvarts has managed to bring both sides of the abortion debate together, in a perverse way. Pro life people are outraged because Shvarts casually gave herself abortions to further her "art." Pro choice people are outraged because they feel she is trivializing an important issue and making the hard choice some women face with an unwanted pregnancy into something absurd.

Aliza Shvarts claims that she was not going for shock value, but rather wanted to make a statement about the relationship of the human body and art. One might suggest that Michelangelo did just that five centuries ago when he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, with far more uplifting results.

Aliza Shvarts' "abortion art" is just the latest cause célèbre or outrage (depending on one's point of view) that has made many people wonder what the art world is up to.

The most famous modern art scandal was created by the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe when he displayed a series of graphic, homoerotic photos that included one work displaying the use of a bull whip as a sexual aid. The outrage by some was compounded by the fact that the exhibit was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. The Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, which displayed the exhibit, was unsuccessfully prosecuted for pandering obscenity.

Artist Andres Serrano started his own controversy by taking a photograph of a small, plastic crucifix in a glass jar of his own urine. This work received an award from the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art and a grant of fifteen thousand dollars from the National Endowment for the Arts. It was this last award, again paid for by the taxpayers, that aroused the ire of politicians and others who regarded it as blasphemous. Serrano has also created a piece of art that depicted the Madonna and Child immersed in urine, which did not arouse any controversy as it was less known and did not receive a government grant.

Chris Ofili also provided a juicy arts scandal with combining the sacred with the filthy by creating a painting of a black Madonna covered with elephant dung. Religious Catholics and others suggested that the piece was blasphemous as it covered the mother of Jesus with filth. Ofili and his supporters countered that elephant dung is considered holy in African culture and that there was no intent to slight the Holy Virgin. The piece aroused the ire of then Mayor Rudi Giuliani and was an issue, for a time, in the campaign of Hillary Clinton for the Senate.

These controversies raise a couple of questions.

What really constitutes art? Should it be designed to "provoke and challenge", as the defenders of the above pieces would maintain? Some people, no doubt artistic philistines, would maintain that such "art" is really designed to elicit outrage and even nausea. Classic art, say as executed by a Michelangelo or a Monet, has tended to uplift, to intrigue, to delight the soul with its beauty. There is nothing beautiful about the works thus described.

In a number of cases controversial art has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts or else has been displayed in tax payer funded art space. Should people be forced to fund "art" that they find repugnant? What about the artists freedom to express him or herself as he/she sees fit?

One would counter that an artist has that freedom no matter what. But the freedom to have that expression foisted on an unwilling public, no matter what, is somewhat more problematic.

Still, one should not have governments or government officials deciding what is art and what is not. It seems to one that the better way to encourage art is not through a government agency, but perhaps through wealthy people of good taste. The first method has given us Piss Christ and Madonnas drenched in filth. The latter brought us the David, the Sistine Chapel, and indeed the Renaissance itself.

Where are the Medicis when one needs them?

Sources:

For senior, abortion a medium for art, political discourse, Martine Powers, Yale Daily News, April 17th, 2008

Robert Mappletyhorpe, Wikipedia

Piss Christ, Wikipedia

Even in Elephant Dung There is Beauty, Anne Roiphe, New York Observer, October 10, 1999

Sources: Yale: Student artwork purporting to show abortion a hoax, Pat, Eaton-Robb, AP, April 17th, 2008

University calls art project a fiction; Shvarts '08 disputes Yale's claim, Zachary Abrahamson, Thomas Kaplan, and Martine Powers, Yale Daily News, April 17th, 2008

Yale "miscarriage artist" confesses to a hoax?, Allahpundit, Hot Air. Com, April 17th, 2008