In our post lecture we mentioned this artist from Yale who was working on her senior project dealing with abortion/miscarriage and the difficulty of that language. Here's some info:
An image of the studio with some of the art in the background.
Now, even though there is the question of whether or not it is "art," there are other important issues to address. Like freedom, like whether or not we know how to talk about this, and INTENTION. As artists, we have to be really careful when we say "that's not art" or judge another artist because it limits our own ability to be able to create. If we are going to judge other people's art as fitting some standard, we need to realize that there is no standard for art. If there was, we would have been stuck in a box and art would not be able to affect and seek social impact and change. While no art has an OBLIGATION to anything in particular, it is good to know that it can reinvent itself and go beyond the perspective of "accepted art."
Los Angeles Times columnist, Meghan Daum, says that the Aliza Shvarts controversy isn't eve all that original; many artists, including photographer Cindy Sherman and multimedia artist Judy Chicago, have incorporated menstrual blood into their work. (Read article here).
As for those maybe-miscarriages and their role in performance art, hoax or some combination thereof, Shvarts has nothing on 18th century Englishwoman Mary Tofts. In 1726, Toft became a sensation when she managed to convince the public and much of the medical community that she was repeatedly giving birth to rabbits.
Part of art is to do the unexpected and sometimes that means to offend. Is offense sometimes a catalyst for change? Why does art offend us sometimes? Why are we even offended?
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