Dimensions magazine is published by students of Yale College; Yale University is not responsible for its contents. We are not formally affiliated with the University, its Art Department or Ms. Aliza Shvarts. A photo spread of Ms. Shvarts’ work was printed in our February 2007 issue and on our website, along with many other examples of student work. We do not maintain formal contact with the artists or writers whose work we print, nor is it our place to give out their personal information to the public or press. Please do not address any letters of concern to Dimensions, as our status as an undergraduate publication does not give us any influence with campus administration.
For the official university statement from the Yale University Office of Public Affairs regarding Ms. Shvarts’ work, please click here or read below:
Statement by Helaine S. Klasky — Yale University, Spokesperson
New Haven, Conn. — April 17, 2008
Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art. Her art project includes visual representations, a press release and other narrative materials. She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. 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.
She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art.
Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns.
ADDENDUM
The statement, "A photo spread of Ms. Shvarts’ work was printed in our February 2007 issue and on our website," refers to a different piece. We have not printed anything pertaining to her senior project, nor has the piece gone on display to the general public.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Aliza Shvarts Disclaimer
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
21 comments:
You should be ashamed of yourselves for any aspect of printing Aliza Shvarts mental illness display, real of fictional. Regardless of pro-life or pro-choice, it's disgusting and repulsive. It's on par with a grown human committing suicide for art - purposeful end to something. This is tasteless and you should all be ashamed of yourselves for even thinking it was okay to print.
It is a mockery to the millions of women who suffer from miscarriage, and a mockery to the millions of women who have had to torture themselves over the decision to "terminate a pregnancy."
I know you have to sway over Yale, and that is certainly a good thing - but you should hear from each and every person how repulsive and depraved you are as people who could even allow this to be printed.
I am sending many more people to this site for such reasons.
May you all find some sort of peace and ease from your own mental illness.
Mrs. Gunning, I suggest you look up Chris Burden, or any of the other performance artists who have used their bodies to open up a dialog.
I do not know whether this artist has had to go through a miscarriage or an abortion (it is quite possible) and will make no statement on whether it is a mockery, but in opening up discussion (even if it turns out 99% of it is negative towards her acts) she has succeeded in one of the primary goals of art.
Good for her. Fabulous, fabulous piece.
Too bad she couldn't stretch the joke out longer. This could have gotten days, if not weeks, of headline news coverage, making the eventual punchline that much sweeter. :-D
The statement, "A photo spread of Ms. Shvarts’ work was printed in our February 2007 issue and on our website," refers to a different piece. We have not printed anything pertaining to her senior project, nor has the piece gone on display to the general public.
It's a tremendous amount of pressure for an artist to be under. I've been involved with performance and installation art that required putting all my faults public and then acting like an asshole (well a stereotype of corporate greed/fear) for 6 hours during the opening.. and I'm not someone who thrives on controversy, just feel that it's important to challenge both the art world and the consuming public. It's quite possible that she isn't either...
Art is about opening a dialog and creating discussion. It's about not taking things at face value.
Even if everyone thinks she is pretentious, a bitch, etc, she's got people talking.
This is where the logical conclusion of performance art goes, onto the internet, onto documentation, onto press releases.
Abortion Art is something that I can see actually happening, and someone using that possibility as a sort of way of satirizing the art world AND the media at the same time is genius.
And about the people saying she's self centered... well, people are always bitching at artists saying they are self centered. It's true that to be an artist it requires a lot of self promotion. It's not enough to have something to say with your work, you have to convince people to listen. No one else will do it for you, you will not be discovered. But that doesn't make the message less meaningful. It's a complete ad hominem argument.
All art has an element of self. When dealing with bodily issues, what could be more poignant than using yourself? Chris Burden, Joseph Beuys, any performance artist. Any comedian, any actor. They are successful because they are using themselves and they HAVE to be ok with being in the public spotlight. It doesn’t mean that they are egotistical (though some can be, obviously.)
Would it be right to use OTHER people’s menstrual blood? or explore your own relationships to the substance.
It’s a lot more pretentious to pretend your work can change the world, to pretend that a picture you took is "about the environment" or similar themes than to make work that relates to your own personal struggle of self, your struggle as an artist, your struggle with art and with the world you're putting such personal expression into.
I have tutored many fine students such as Ms. Shvarts.
I'm not surprised that Godwin's law was hit so early in this discussion.
This is truly great stuff. I owe Miss (I assume it's Miss) Shvarts many drinks. The timing was perfect. Very well done. Thanks!
Brilliant. Had me going.
Maybe one of the greatest pieces of performance art I've witnessed.
One of the key elements of the performance is all of you people freaking out over it.
I am appalled at this awful debacle. Here I was, imagining this skilled and talented artist squatting over her canvas and lurching about as a protosimian, twisted wire coathanger clenched in hand, birthing a chunky marinara Pollockesque masterpiece, the raw genetic refuse steaming the clinical chill of the studio air.
All lies! Fie and poppycock! Nonetheless, I await with bated breath the next scandalous work by this brazen twenty-first century Kali.
Brava!
Aliza, my hearts breaks for you. You are a deeply troubled women. I pray that one day you will drop to your knees and ask the God who created you, to forgive you. I'll pray for all the dear children you sacrificed and for what? I can't imagine what your parents are thinking. I weep for them and for their grandchildren - life is so precious - one day you when you are older and wiser, you will come to this understanding - and I promise you, you will regret this.
I assume Miss Shvarts had to seek approval from her professor (or panel) for her proposed, senior project. The art department at Yale has probably known about this for months. Disgusting.
Yale is a ridiculously over-rated, morally and intellectually bankrupt institution...and cowards to boot.
If anyone really gets excited by this "art project"; there are plenty of pictures of aborted, dismembered babies. However, it seems that when this "art" is displayed, no one applauds, says "fabulous," or talks about how inspired they are to dialog about the human body.
In fact, I am quite sure that if a pro-life student wanted to do a similar project with said pictures and props that they would most certianly be shut down and run off of the Yale Campus. Yes, we know how it works in these elitist organizations interested only in promoting their own agenda and points of view. Frankly, the hypocrisy makes me want to vomit...such an obvious double standard.
In my opinion, the vast majority of today's artists are a complete disappointment. Very few of them produce anything beautiful or meaningful. It is their own emptiness and lack of being that is reflected in their work. There is nothing inside of them so they resort to "shock art". It's very immature and depressing to me. Where have the real artists gone?
When Darko Maver did essentially the same thing a decade ago, he strung the art world along for a bit longer. And in the end, it turned out that not only was the work fake, but so was he.
Meanwhile, nearly a century after their first display, people still express disgust and frustration with Duchamp's "Fountain" and Manzoni's "Artist's Shit". People still see Pollocks for the first time, and still say "my kid could paint that! That isn't art!"
Yes, the artists are talentless, the academy is decadent and worthless, modern society is corrupt and despicable, and everyone who's shocked and horrified is absolutely right. We should all go back to the Renaissance, paint pictures of angels, burn the impious as witches, sell our daughters into marriage at age 14, and send the mentally ill off to nunneries and monasteries. That'll help.
Here's hoping we can keep profiting by pulling the same old tricks on the unwashed masses well into the next century. Here's hoping the same easy controversies can make us rich well into the next millennium.
Yes, thank you Nick, that is exactly what my point was in my above statement...I am waxing nostalgic for the Dark Ages. Fabulous! Harump, Harump! I am just too much of an unwashed cretin to understand what I was REALLY trying to say.
Scintillating rebuttal. Now I'll sit my public university schooled a## down at your intellectually superior feet to be further illuminated....
Yawn.
Anonymous
"I am waxing nostalgic for the Dark Ages. Fabulous! Harump, Harump! I am just too much of an unwashed cretin to understand what I was REALLY trying to say.
Scintillating rebuttal."
Especially since the "artist" in question is aping a century-old movement, Dadaism, the hypocrisy of the attack is rather blatent.
What these Derriere-gardeists run into is the fact that this is all old hat. Even before the Dadaists and Surrealists had their innings in the 1910's-20's, the Incoherents were befuddling the French with altered Mona Lisas and all black paintings entitled "Negroes Fighting in a Cellar at Night" in the 1880's. Here are some examples of the work of the most famous member of the school, Emile Cohl:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEAObel8yIE
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Emile+Cohl&search_type=
The difference between these precursors and wowsers like Shvarts is that the former had the moral courage to take responsibility for their outrages and most had some modicum of talent. They also reached the limit beyond which one cannot go a long time ago, thus the modern "performance art" movement is just a bunch of derivative epigones with no true originality of their own. Our little philistine (abortion as kitsch) is as prime an example of mis-education as you'll find.
As much as I would like to believe that what she is doing is just pushing the envelope in what art really is, I cannot. To me, this seems like a very smart career move on her part. While her antics are disgusting, she is very smart because her newsworthy project has put her on the map. When you Google Aliza Shvarts, you can get 86,000 hits on her name. Now that she is about to graduate, it will make it very easy to get a job with a company that encourages eccentric art of this nature. The buzz around this sadistic art project and society’s interest in it has gotten Aliza exactly what she wanted, what were we all thinking?
Just further proof of this viral story spreading.
http://perezhilton.com/?s=yale
Amazed how may commnetators were able to give a mental illness diognosis without being qualified to diagnose. So what did Aliza do what is not done daily by most in our society ( artificial insemination, abortion...). Whether she did or did not do what her art states (she in fact never claimed it be a scientific project which must be scientificly proven).... For sure she raised attention to many topics. Shame on Yale advisors and professors who encouraged and supported her til it looked as a possible liability and at that point all run as rats from a sinking ship. The fact of being betraid by her mentors is the assence here and maybe the best lesson of loyalty, integrity and hypocracy of our "free society" . Who are we and what are our values and when do we turn on somebody and why....
Unfortunatly this behaivor proves why fear driven hurd was obeying Hitler, Stalin and Mao no matter what was their intellect and education.
Ex refugee from Communist state
Our class president at CalArts last year tried this same publicity stunt. Nice to know there really is a dialog between the schools. If I were to strap a bomb on myself and walk into the Yale Art Department while leaving an artist statement claiming it was a performance piece created to promote dialog over the elitism of the Institution, would they defend my actions? I mean, the people left?
So did Aliza Shvart's art or hoax art left you without pension or forclosed your mortagage.
Check about hoax where hoax will demage you....... Be nice if some would analitcally think not only be a hurd...... So instead of having the shocking reaction any human who wouldfirst rationalize and after react will know THIS IS PERFORMANCE ART and if it would be exhibited it be some video and other artifacts what most observed in movies. So how about you all shocked crowd never see a movie with torn off heads and blood anymore.
Post a Comment