Thursday, April 17, 2008

Only Humanity Was Harmed in the Making of This Exhibit

I'm not even fully awake yet, and I'm trying to absorb the horror of the following story linked to Drudge. My first thought was that this is a parody, but then, that's always my first thought about the left. But some things just aren't funny. There's nothing funny about the Holocaust, or child abuse, or animal cruelty.

For Senior, Abortion a Medium for Art, Political Discourse:

"Art major Aliza Shvarts '08 wants to make a statement."

Okay, let's stop right there. Why not just make the statement with words? Art should be reserved for disclosing transcendent realities that are beyond the reach of words. For example, great poetry and prose have the mysterious capacity to say what words cannot say, which is why they require skill and vision. To put it another way, if you are merely trying to encode some profane ideology in a work of art, it isn't art, but a tedious form of pedantry and didacticism. It's not art but pornography, the latter being any activity that drains reality of its transcendent dimension.

On to her senior art project, which consists of

"a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself as often as possible while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages.... The project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery.... Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts' self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

"Schvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said."

It would never occur to the psychologist in me to call this "art." Rather, I would take this as prima facie evidence of a severe mental disorder -- perhaps a borderline personality with psychopathic and psychotic features -- psychopathic because of the evident lack of a rudimentary conscience, psychotic because of the primitive rage directed at the content of her own womb (which is a symbol of her hostile and dismembered psyche). While a conscience remains, it is "torn into bits," so to speak, so that it becomes a meaningless cluster of persecutory demons no longer bearing any relationship to a human moral code. In a way, it becomes a subhuman moral code, with no true center or consistency -- just a kind of sadistic lashing out. It is punishment with no crime. Thus, the infinitely innocent fetus is the ideal repository for an infinite rage.

To put it another way, if the dismembered and projected "bits" of her conscience were ever to again cohere into a recognizably human form, she would likely experience a suicidal depression. As would any decent person upon realizing the unforgivable nature of their transgression. A regrettable abortion is one thing. But this is a different category altogether, a "snuff abortion film." The conversion of shame to narcissistic exhibitionism only makes it more bizarre.

Classical liberalism is founded on a sober recognition of man's dark side. It is not cynical, but realistic. This dark side cannot be eliminated, but it can be sublimated, for example, through the magic of the free market.

But the left denies this dark side, while at the same time covertly elevating it to a kind of God. This is where the atavism and primitivity of the left comes in. When defending some work of creative psychopathy, e.g., "gangster rap," how many times have you heard the responsible party say words to the effect that, "I just want to show how things really are." Again, if this is the case, words will suffice. The purpose of art cannot be to remind us that sewage smells, much less that it actually smells good -- i.e., that it is not shit masquerading as art, but vice versa.

Anyway, on to the "purpose" of Shvarts' project:

"The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body."

Hmmm. Schuon once made a comment to the effect that most modern art that is called "surreal" -- ie., "above" reality -- is actually sub-real, or beneath it. Here is a fine example. In this instance, there was no need to go to the trouble of intentionally making oneself pregnant, knowing full well ahead of time that one was going to repeatedly destroy the lives created. Rather, one could just wonder out loud, "what if I do this?" If you are anything close to a normal woman -- well, if you are normal, the question would never occur to you. But if it did, the self-evident answer -- whether from nature or God -- would preclude the possibility of actually carrying out the "project." For what is there to say in this "conversation" besides "what is wrong with me?"

Yes, a spiritually normal person regards the left with horror. But one of the central projects of the left over the past half century has been -- in the words of one of the last liberal Democrats, Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- to "define deviancy down," so that the perverse, the amoral, the subhuman, all become normative.

Likewise, the central political project of the left has been to use government to create more human dysfunction and dependence, thus creating and encouraging a greater need for government to "rescue" people from their dysfunction and cater to their dependence. It will be very difficult -- if not impossible -- to arrest this civilizational decline. After all, Ms. Shvarts did not come up with her soul pathology unassisted. Rather, her attitudes were nurtured in one of our most esteemed temples of "higher" learning. Fifty years ago she might have been committed. Today she will be granted a Ph.D.

The clueless Shvarts says that she hopes her project "inspires some sort of discourse.... Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it's not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone.'"

"Inspire some discourse." This is the all-purpose excuse for any subhuman activity that hides behind the word "art." Why not, say, murder some homeless, mentally ill people, in order to inspire discourse on the relationship between mental illness and the lack of a fixed address?

In a chilling statement straight out of the nazi playbook, Shvarts says "she was not concerned about any medical effects the forced miscarriages may have had on her body. The abortifacient drugs she took were legal and herbal, she said, and she did not feel the need to consult a doctor about her repeated miscarriages." Undoubtedly nazi doctors washed their hands and took other sanitary precautions when performing their medical experiments on Jewish children.

Another student says that he is "intrigued by the creativity and beauty" of the project. I wonder if this same person is intrigued by the beauty of President Bush's project to bring democracy to the Muslim world?

Hey, it's not as if Shvarts has no values. Rather, "I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity.... I think that I'm creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be."

As I have written many times, the horror of the left emanates from a combination of ruthless morality cynically detached from any traditional channel. Thus, ideology trumps common decency every time, and thereby becomes deadly.

But at least no animals were harmed in the making of this exhibit. Only humans. And human decency.

61 comments:

Lisa said...

Yet another case of a moonbat trying to cut off her nose (or some other body part) to spite her face! How in God's name could this even be considered art and who is encouraging this behavior? Did she have a teacher mentor? If so, this teacher should be locked up for a long time and lose all teaching credentials and this girl needs some serious mental care. You gotta just love all the other students rationalizations to try and maintain a serious critique of that shit in the art world! Perhaps it really is God's will...she may not be able to get pregnant at a later date and that sure would save us all the grief and burden of passing on idiot genes to a future generation.

Boy, am I glad I graduated from a liberal arts college in the last millennium and have no desire to continue along those lines! Saves my money and my soul!

Anonymous said...

At least she didn't blow up a federal building.

vanderleun said...

Congratulations. That server and all of yale daily news is now down!

The Cosmoslanche has struck!

vanderleun said...

And there seems to be a bit of an assist from the Drudge Report.

vanderleun said...

But it didn't happen until after you posted.

Anonymous said...

"The Raccoon crows and causes the sun to rise."

julie said...

Wow. Just... Wow.

If she had waited a little longer to slaughter her offspring, she'd be eligible to become a permanent resident of Patton; instead, she's getting an art degree.

"To put it another way, if the dismembered and projected "bits" of her conscience were ever to again cohere into a recognizably human form, she would likely experience a suicidal depression."

This seems to me the kind of behavior that should have the campus mental health nazis recommending some serious therapy, but I guess since she's calling it "art" she's a-ok. I'm astounded at the pathology not only of the "artist," but of the school that is embracing her chosen medium. I guess I shouldn't be, by now, but I am.

F@cking sick.

walt said...

You once used the phrase, "turned my quizzer up to 11."

Is there a "Minus" side on that quizzer? Surely this art project rates a -11.

How low can people go? Lower than I can imagine.

Anonymous said...

Absolutely horrifying.

I suppose there is one thing that I, as a gen x'er can take from this...I am not so jaded that I am not utterly horrified by such an action.

Can we, as a culture, really be this far from sanity? As a musician, I can't even imagine how "art" got to such an impasse. The "lure of heresy" as a recent book on Modernism subtitles the issue.

Anonymous said...

the concept of inducing abortions for 'art' completely blows my mind

thus i can't string together any words to express my feelings of sadness for acquiring this information

Anonymous said...

I... Just... I can't feel anything but rage about this... No snarky comment, no diatribe, no discussion springs to mind...

Only rage.

God help us all.

Anonymous said...

Having been to art school in the '90s , I'm pretty open minded about what I allow to be called 'Art', but this is truly stomach turning.

NoMo said...

Abortion...no longer just a science!

Art is apparently now defined as any creative expression - however destructive. Beauty turned inside out.

What a blatant lie for her to say, "... it's not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone." Since those who have been numbed into sanctioning / accepting abortion as a fact of "life" will simply be bored by her creativity. The only ones who will care about it are those for whom it is "scandalous" (disgraceful).

Its hard to say, but I feel for her - she is one seriously messed up person.

Anonymous said...

At least she didn't bomb the Pentagon, then host a fund raiser for Barak Obama.

Jim said...

I will pray for her and her unborn children. May the Lord have mercy on her soul.

Anonymous said...

well this women's name (Shvarts) is not too far from schvartze...that is this person is spiritually dark...

Anonymous said...

how is your reaction to this different than an old man saying about jazz or rock and roll or what-have-you 'I just don't get this new fangled 'art'. Its just junk'?

That you don't understand it, and assume she is insane, just shows your fascistic need to ridicule or eliminate that which you don't like or understand.

Van Harvey said...

Here's another test of whether something is 'art' or not: If describing you 'artwork' makes people want to vomit... it's not art.

OMG.

Van Harvey said...

Here's a first - What the anonymous's said.

Van Harvey said...

u said - you're worse than she is, you want to justify it.

Sickening.

Van Harvey said...

If 'usaid' becomes acceptable, no doubt we will all have 'VA-Tech Shooter Art' look forward to.

Excuse me, I'm going to go loose my lunch now.

robinstarfish said...

She has parents, I presume, that are paying for this education?

Karma will be a mean bitch for this one.

Anonymous said...

A couple things I'm wondering... where are the adults in all this, couldn't the "project" be labled and treated as a biohazard aaannnnd wouldn't the strategic flick of a bic turn it all into a burnt offering to the god of Ghoulish Psychotic Skank?

vanderleun said...

video and pic of this moron at my place

James said...

Hmmmm... let's look further down this road... Hmmm... Oh yes, we will have gladiatorial blood games and other bits of pagan ritual violence. As Bob said, human sacrifice is the default religion of mankind. Once we turn away from a recognition of the intrinsic value of human life we start down the road towards the abyss.

James said...

I said a prayer for her.

Anonymous said...

Well, call me an idiot, but I'm intrigued as to what the blood under the plastic sheeting, and overlaid on the cube, would look under illumination. It could be a pretty cool effect, in a purely visual way.

but then, one could use food coloring to get the red, and thicken it with corn starch to get the required viscosity.

Anonymous said...

U: Are you a spiritual moron? She is using the living (herself and the conceptus) in a malicious way to make an artful statement. This is an oxymoron dude.

Anonymous said...

>>Schuon once made a comment to the effect that most modern art that is called "surreal" -- ie., "above" reality -- is actually sub-real, or beneath it<<

Another way to put it is that "surreal" art is the stuff of the lower astral, the domain of archetypal evil where divine cohesion begins to break down - in other words, this is where true chaos begins, where Creation's evolutionary arrow is reversed. Let no man put asunder, etc.

One of the blessings of the material world - yes, there are some - is that the real essence of chaos is restrained. Sometimes we can get a glimpse of true chaos in a nightmare, but for the most part we are protected.

This won't always be the case. People like Schvart, those who are purveying the chaos of the lower astral, will someday have to live with the essence of their anti-creations. They really do need our prayers.

Hell, WE need our prayers to protect us from the fallout.

QP said...

This savage project of wanton desecration and support of it reveals sheer madness - The vivisection of Christendom proceeds apace behind the once venerated, ivy covered walls of Yale.

Anonymous said...

*F* u

JWM

julie said...

There's a good point made at The Corner that this project may be a hoax. I hope and pray it is, but that doesn't change the abhorrence of the entire concept.

QP said...

Thanks for the link to Levin's post on a possible hoax. This quote is a typical doc response: "Self-insemination of the sort she seems to be claiming is no easy feat, and “herbal” abortifacients are extremely dangerous and not at all reliably effective."

That's simply BS. Think people or do I need to come back and spell it out. "Herbal” abortifacients are numerous and have been perfected since the dawn of "uh oh".

Best part of that riff: "Either way, where are the adults at Yale?"

NoMo said...

Way off topic, but on a MUCH lighter note...

Stephen Macdonald said...

julie:

I also saw the piece which indicates this is probably a hoax.

It is nonetheless indicative of the truly demonic nature of the left.

An old mentor of mine once remarked that "America contains within her the very best and the very worst of everything".

Anonymous said...

If its a hoax, it wouldn't be demonic. The demonic part is aborting things just to get a rise out of people. If it was a ruse to get a rise, without the killing part - well, that's almost kind of funny. Almost.

Anonymous said...

So it's cows blood wrapped up in cellophane and some poorly acted bathtub porn?
I thought no animals were harmed? Now this bitch is in some REAL trouble.

Anonymous said...

NewsBusters calls BS on the "abortion" element, while still recognizing the profoundly ugly implications it has for art, higher education, and basic human decency:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/04/17/yale-students-abortion-art-claim-scam

julie said...

According to Yale, it is a hoax, er, "performance art."

It's still f@cking sick.

mushroom said...

Glad I came in late today. Instead of something demonic we get a really bad episode of MacGyver.

"Yeah, Mac, I need to get an art degree from Yale, but all I have is a bucket of blood from the the butcher shop, a jar of vaseline, some plastic sheeting and a turkey baster. Any suggestions?"

Anonymous said...

Each time I think these losers can't get any sicker or more perverse..... hoax or not,
'low' must have no bottom.

Did everyone get aload over at Gerard's of the advisor Pia doing the Iron Maiden number?

Geeeeze Pia, get a LIFE

It's good these nut-jobs escalate their crap - they're busy sowing the seeds of their own destruction. The more they do it, the more the alternatives, such as Online Education, get a boost.

No way I'd pay for a kid of mine to waste their time in such a venue.

Gagdad Bob said...

"Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art," a Yale spokeswoman, Helaine Klasky, said. "The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body."

Hmm. If she is concerned about ambiguity surrounding the form and function of a woman's body, why not just say so?

Speaking for myself, it seems to me that female form and function mesh so beautifully that they are evidence of divine influence. Perhaps a good topic for tomorrow's post: traces of divinity in the human form.

julie said...

That would be a delightful segue, Bob, and a great demonstration that beautiful things really do grow out of crap ;)

Anonymous said...

It's "performance art" about ambiguity.
Oh, gee. I feel like such a rube. Because, you know- I missed the nuance. Totally didn't get the joke. I retract all the snarky comments, and outraged commentary. I understand now. The girl's a genius. Too smart for the likes of me.

JWM

Gagdad Bob said...

I love the statement from the spokesdope:

"She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art."

As if anyone questioned her right to express herself.

"Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns."

What ethical standards do they apply to art?

And how is lying about one's work in conformity with ethical standards?

NoMo said...

So even bad ideas can be art now. Yes! I can be famous!

Stephen Macdonald said...

Bob:

The horror (and that is an apt word) is only slightly diminished.

Your initial instincts were whole, forceful and unambiguous.

I've been troubled in my own small life vis a vis the Left. Tonight I sat for marbled beef with men collectively worth (conservatively) $900 million. It amazes me that once I take that 28 ft plunge into waters that I am ALMOST certain are 15 ft. deep before yielding to rock -- it amazes me how may people yield to reason as we 'coons (juniors, seniors - even kits) understand it.

Men are cast of strong stuff. 2500 years since Plato, and 2000 years since out Lord punctuated History -- we should not be swayed by the Devil's pot-shots.

Anonymous said...

I agree, it remains deeply disturbing because of the globally sadistic nature of what she did. She still thought it, got it approved by similarly confused "adults" and enlisted some fellow travelers, now including the Yale admin.

And she is so misguided as to think the project says something about the function of the female body as opposed to what it so obviously highlights: the deteriorated nature of contemporary art, morality, culture, and our collective understanding of reality.

This is like Yale took a Rorschach and flunked.

Rick said...

We’ll never know just when the word Art was hijacked, only that it was. Probably sometime when a person was moved by the force within an otherwise skillful piece and thought maybe that’s what they liked about it. So they tried to make a little of there own. The intoxicating part must be that there is so little competition there, I’m certain, because only so many people are willing to make a dying at it.

The beauty in Michelangelo’s David is not the violence or the kill that was about to take place for the sake of those things alone, but the good that was about to fight back and why. The perfect good in perfect form doing what it is supposed to do or “be.” Everyone should be able to identify ideal Man before he was carved. You’re born with it. Michelangelo saw him and David is just one expression. It took an incredible amount of good old fashioned hard work to see that in the stone when no one else could, if you know the story. You can find the ugly there too if you want to use your imagination that way, I suppose. But it was the beauty that was being elevated to larger than life, not the ugly. You should see that it was the ugly conquered. Pick your team, beauty or ugly.

I doubt this so-called performance artist doesn’t or didn’t know what beauty is; what beautiful Art really is. I say she was jealous of it and wanted it, then sold her soul sometime ago to get it. Some forked-tongue snake oil salesman sold her a bill of bads. It’s the lazy man’s cure-all. It’s pretty easy to think of the next most horrific thought and then express it under the hijacked banner of art. Her so-called art is clearly to get attention any way she can even if she has to kill for it. It may be a hoax but still in the category of horrific even if only entertained in her mind. I say the contract that keeps on taking, the lasting crime, among the others already mentioned here, is the soul murder her art continues to commit. One of them being that it is providing more “proof” to otherwise normal people who think art may be at least stupid or worse. Here’s more proof. Thank you very much. These forms are certainly repulsive and one form of soul murder as I see it, because man is not living when he is “just getting by” without beauty.

I still think there is more beauty yet to come from Art. There is no way it’s all been done. I think even Michelangelo toward the end of his life was reaching beyond the real for the truly Real beauty that was still uncarved in his previous work. I can point to some examples. There is more beauty coming in Art. If we can’t see it, it’s because no one out there is making any or it’s just not getting the attention it is earning. I’m hoping this ugly art is just making that not-yet-arrived Art all the more beautiful by comparison.

But until then, what is it about the left that when they claim to see so much ugly in the world go out and add as much of their own as they can to the already huge stinking pile? This is how you fix it? How about pointing to the beauty so the rest of us know what to shoot for?

Anonymous said...

This is like Yale took a Rorschach and flunked.

...and what do you see in this inkblot?

Why, the oppression of womyn, gays, transgendered, questioning, and the other-oriented by the evil heteronrmative patriarchal hegemony of right-wing Christian bigots. What else?

JWM

mushroom said...

heteronormative -- like that's a bad thing.

Years ago I was in a Christian bookstore and bought a copy of The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee.

One of the boys behind the counter started to ring it up and said, "Normal Christian life -- I don't want normal."

The other boy said, "That's because you don't know what normal means."

walt said...

Update, which should put all our minds/souls at ease:

“No one can say with 100-percent certainty that anything in the piece did or did not happen,” Shvarts said, “because the nature of the piece is that it did not consist of certainties.”

Anonymous said...

Walt:
The girl gets more despicable with every quote. I hope she enjoys the 15 minutes she's getting. Which, as I think on it, brings up another point. It would seem that fifteen minutes of outrage, loathing, censure and disgust is an acceptable substitute for the same amount of fame.
Art!

JWM

gumshoe said...

with some circumspection,
could it just be a scam by the "woman"
and her "mentor"(dementor?).


Fake Blood + Lying = ATTENTION

the "activists"
do stuff like this a lot,non?

they would both likely
enjoy the outrage that much more.

an effort to "feed more poison into the system"...or to "beat them with their own rule-book" as Alynski-ites would say...

as was formerly said of the 'Net,
is increasingly true of the media and art worlds(and of course,
modern 'wacademia'):

"Extremely Low Barriers to Entry"

gumshoe said...

i see others have beaten me to the hoax notion in today's comments.

glad to see it.

Van Harvey said...

For those needing an antidote to that bucket of filth(anyone not?),
Art Renewal Center - a vast online museum of art as Art should be - excellent essays as well.

Looking at the before and after Yale picks on Van der Leun's site... I wonder how much of 'her now' was present in 'her then'? Or maybe the better question is, how much of 'her then' is no longer alive in 'her now'?

Anonymous said...

The mistake I see in this post, is your assumption that all liberals and professors of higher education would endorse such depravity.

None of my liberal friends and acquiantances would approve of such a callous indifference to life and the human body, nor would they call such acts, "art."

Every group has its extreme crazies and wierdos, but you cannot jugde the whole by the one.

BTW-- in the previous article, I notice that in the theory, a man needs a woman just as much as a woman supposedly needs a man, you only choose to emphasize the latter.

The problem with this theory is that God does not make slaves of us. He wants us to come together of our owm free will (obviously obedient--which obviously leaves the option of disobedience and thus leaves our free will intact) and not be forced into unions. That is why rape is a serious crime in any society, human or animal.

Furthermore, the idea that we cannot be whole without each other has led to massive psychological dis-ease, where one is unable to fully love and support their families and spouses becauase they have no identity within themselves.

The picture is more complex then your theorist chooses to recognize.

Furtermore, societally we do need to be careful how we define what it means to be either a man or a woman.

There is no reason that women should not work if they choose it. There is no reason to assume that women should be barred from intellectual disciplines. Women don't need to have "diffuse awareness" as one particularly offensive author whose name I can't remmeber suggested.

Also, we must be careful in how we define what it is to be a man. There is no reason that men can't be a major part of the caretaking process. There is no reason why women can't be the breadwinner and there is no reason that men shouldn't if they so choose be the caretaker.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, two typos that I can't edit.

That should be -- obedient to God and later on I meant to add that there is no reason that a man and woman shouldn't be able to decide to share the breadwinning and caretaking roles if they so choose.

Anonymous said...

Just caught the hoax angle. Still unbelievably abbhorant and it still bears nothing resembling art which requires creativity and actual skill to execute.

Van Harvey said...

"Every group has its extreme crazies and wierdos, but you cannot jugde the whole by the one. "

The obvious problem with that argument, hinges on whether the crazies and weirdos involved happen to be in a group but in opposition to that groups ideals, or in support of them.

If a thug who wanted the flash and excitement of wearing a Policemen's uniform in order to force himself on others and break the law when he wished, not to protect people and enforce the law - he is a bad apple and not reflective of the rest of the Police force. But on the other hand, if the crazie weirdo in question is actually following directly in the ideals of the group they have joined, taking those ideals to 'extremes' which others would perhaps be scared to approach, but are no way in fundamental opposition to them, they then are not mere 'bad apples', they are the choicest fruit of the rotted tree.

There is nothing about the 'ideals' and philosophy underlying such performance pap, that she violated - nothing in her act was in contradiction to the 'ideals' of the original dadaist toilet art, the later piss christ 'sculpture' or any of the long and repulsive string of the like.

Follow my previous link, there are several essays there which will fill you in on the details. Or, I think still on Gagdad's book links, 'Explaining Postmodernism' by Stephen R. C. Hicks.

Yunz Free PGH Resident said...

anonymous: "At least she didn't blow up a federal building."



If she did, it would require interpretation, as McVey's subjective actions did. Her actions don't, debasement of Nature is as simple to understand as your neighbor’s allowing of his Labrador Retriever’s depositing of its excrement on your porch stoop.

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