Our Crumbling Civilization: Killing For Art Edition

The Yale Daily News Web site is dead (temporarily) because of this story of a woman who killed (permanently) her unborn babies as an art project:

For senior, abortion a medium for art, political discourse

Martine Powers, Staff Reporter
Thursday, April 17, 2008

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

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, 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. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts' project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock . saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.

But Shvarts insists her concept was not designed for "shock value."

"I hope it inspires some sort of discourse," Shvarts said. "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." ...

The display of Schvarts' project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. 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. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.

Where do I start? What can I say? I'm not going to fisk this piece because it is too appalling and perverted for words.

Sacrificing human life to create a discourse is, perhaps, the most obscene and horrifying thing ever done in the name of "art." And her apology -- "I didn't intend to scandalize anyone" -- is perhaps the most horrifyingly out of touch statement ever made by anyone not the leader of a totalitarian state.

No, rather than fisk, I'll just raise some questions.

What sort of society creates monsters like Aliza Shvarts?

Certainly, it is not one that respects life. I know nothing about this woman, but I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that Shvarts is a liberal and is against the war in Iraq because it is "blood for oil."

Yet because we live in a society where a holocaust many times over has been perpetrated on the unborn, Shvarts is able to support "blood for art" without so much as a flinch in her horribly deformed morality.

What sort of university condones this sort of thing?

Yale of course is not alone among universities that have lost all sensibility, but it seems to be intent on carving out a place for itself as the most nonsensical of universities: It hired Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, the former Deputy Foreign Secretary of the Taliban; it employs Dr. LaMont Cole, an environmentalist who taught his students, "To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world over population problem;" and, who can forget, it celebrated Valentine's Day 2004 with university-funded, faculty-supported Sex Week at Yale.

Here's a description of that last one; hide the kids and the sensitive folks:

One Yale professor gave a lecture on the "History of the Vibrator." Students gave talks on the secrets of great sex, hooking up, and how to be a better lover. At "Sex Toys 101," people who admitted to never having used a sex toy were given miniature vibrators. The highlight of the week for most, however, was the presence of Devinn Lane, a bisexual porn star from Wicked Pictures—the adult film company who [sic] co-sponsored many of the Sex-Week events.

Lane participated in a panel on "Sex, Entertainment and the Media" and held a Q&A session with female undergraduates. She topped off her day by participating in a "Porn Party" that was sponsored by Wicked Pictures, which advertised the event on the Adult Industry News website: "All events are free and open to the public, so make this your time to explore Sex Week at Yale, and the exotic world of Wicked Pictures."

Institutions of higher learning have been entrusted to the 60's Secularist liberals, and they have converted them into institutions of gutter learning -- and still, parents not only allow their children to go to schools like Yale, they pay the schools small fortunes to destroy their children.

Whatever happened to art?

There was a time when art existed to glorify God by showing the beauty of His creation and illustrating the stories of His book. Then came a time when art existed to bring people joy.

Today, art exists, in the words of Shvarts:

"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."

There are two extremes there, neither one of which I'd call art. The first, of course, is Shvarts' miscarried pre-borns, ripped from the womb, mixed with Vaseline and splattered on plastic to create discourse through the processes of killing, defiling, offending and nauseating.

Then there is the manufactured image, commodity art, sold by the thousands of pieces from catalogs to decorate hotel rooms and trailer park community centers.

Does Yale, the art establishment and Shvarts want that to be it? Nothing in between? No serene still lifes, exquisite portraits, or lush landscapes? Not even any Picassos or Hockneys or Lichtensteins?

What right to they have to attack art that gives us serene pleasure in the name of provocation and hack ideologies?

What constitutes crime in America?

People are in prison in America because they got high on crack, but Aliza Shvarts will not be prosecuted for the crime of creating her art, because in America self-aborting a dozen pre-borns in the name of art is not a crime.

Why isn't she getting help?

The Yale Daily News article never raised the issue of Shvarts' mental health, but she is either souless and completely amoral, or she has a serious mental illness. If she denies the former, which she basically does through her comments, then she is the latter.

But she cannot be forced to receive the care she needs, apparently. Her parents are now probably aware of what their little girl is doing at Yale. Will they remove her and put her under the care of someone who will help her?

Or will they brag to their friends that their artist daughter is at the forefront of the post-modern art movement?