Probably The Next World-Famous Artist
April 18th, 2008 | researchmaterial
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.
Yale Daily News – For senior, abortion a medium for art, political discourse
(via Charlie Stross, thanks)
is the award-winning creator of graphic novels such as 
WOW. I would like to say something more, but I’m at a loss. Wow…wow.
While I consider myself pro-choice, this utter disregard for viable human life is ridiculous. For what, for fucking ART? This is not art. Seriously, why didn’t she just go buy some slavechildren from Asia and use their intestines as papier mache? Bout the same end result. Never thought I’d agree with the lifers on anything, but holy fucking shit. Certain people need to stop doing acid.
What in the holy fuck?
I cannot imagine any sort of point that she’s actually trying to make.
Folks, she put out a press release about this *in the middle of a Papal visit*.
That’s all you need to know to understand what this is: the most inspired publicity-stunt debut in the art world since Damien Hirst unleashed himself with a display of freeze-dried aborted foetuses as earrings in the mid-1980s.
I predict she’ll go far.
Meanwhile, your word for today is “choriocarcinoma”.
This will go down as the next urine floating crucifix for American right wingers. Bill O’Reilly is sitting in his office right now rubbing himself in anticipation of his upcoming righteous rage.
While I completely disagree with the art itself, I think it’s a statement about choice itself.
Yet this one isn’t as “tough” as it is in my experience.
I’m curious to hear a woman’s reaction.
Ridiculous. It strikes me more as self-abuse than “art”.
As a female gotta say i personally think this is brilliant, can see why people are upset about it, but hey it’s her body.
On behalf of the McCain campaign I’d just like to say, “It’s never too early for Christmas morning!”
Thanks, crazy girl whose daddy didn’t pay enough attention to her, thanks a lot.
This is art ??
So Jack the Riper was Da Vinci and Charles Manson is Picasso.
Breed just for killing, killing just for…exibicionism ?!?!?
God is not dead as some says (he jus don’t want interfere) but art surely is.
Why did she do this?
Because she can. That’s all art needs.
I had the same thought as Charlie did, up there. Putting this out in the middle of the Pope’s US visit is fantastic.
She’ll have a hard time dreaming up a follow up exhibition. Where do you go from here- oil pastels?
This is absolutely the perfect representation of NON art. To even use the word in conjunction with this sick little personal project is a disservice to every true artist. It is WHY people think conceptual art is a load of shit. It personifies that whole ‘a 3 year old could do it’ theory. Feel free to photograph ones vomit, mount slides with your snot and blood, scatter your used tampons across a canvas, etc. As long was you call it conceptual art your covered. Since she is NOT an artist in ANY sense of the word we should applaud her marketing. Interviews ahead of time, blog notes, mass media coverage.It’s everywhere. She did what every good promoter with no talent does.
When a true artist like Matthew Barney has to compete with the perception of ‘art’ that people get from stupid college hi jinks like this it is sad. As someone who is in the art world, has a long term family gallery interest dating back to Winslow Homer and the like I am so insulted by childish crap like this garnering attention. By the way, her little scattered body part pieces with duct tape crap you posted…rginal statemnt at all.
I’m sure Aliza’s mother is crying somewhere right now wondering why she didn’t follow through with her abortion.
I’m not outraged about the abortion part of this (come on, a fetus at that stage has less brain power than a lobster) but I agree with that rant gabe posted about what bullshit it is to call this art.
You wanna shoot dead quasi-babies out your vag? Feel free, but you shouldn’t be making money, getting interviews, and calling yourself talented for it.
I’m calling hoax on this one. it just doesn’t smell right
http://img515.imageshack.us/my.php?image=abuc7.jpg
This picture seems relevant.
And Owen, I can only imagine what it smells like.
Jack The Ripper most certainly WAS an artist. He absolutely should have been arrested, tried and convicted simply because it is illegal to use womens’ (or mens’ for that matter) bodies as a canvas for that type of art. However his brief and limited ouvre has probably had more influence on art on this planet in the twentieth century than any other nineteenth century artist.
Charles Manson WASN’T and ISN’T an artist. Just a wacko.
“it just doesn’t smell right”
Eewwww.
I’m very disappointed that anyone took this seriously. The only credit due this chick is that she had the self-restraint to not make the announcement on April Fool’s Day.
Three well-deserved cheap shots:
1. The (catch-all crap art) defense is that by doing this she’s provoking debate (note all of us walking into her dumbass trap).
2. I can waste tens of thousands more times’ wasted life into a tissue in the time it’s taken me to write this post (not my point originally, stolen from Hicks I think).
3. I bet she can’t draw.
I’m not much of an artist (writing is more my trade), but this feels less like “art” and more like “stupid human trick.”
Successful troll is successful.
Wow, Pro-Lifers are going to kill her. Hurr.
[...] Ellis has been all over this story and suggested from the very first that Shvarts is “probably the next world famous artist”. He was quick to realize that “the press release itself is the art piece” and [...]
Just like with marylin manson, the people who hate him make him famous. So the more people freak out about her, the more attention she will get.
“It personifies that whole ‘a 3 year old could do it’ theory.”
Reconsider.
http://pics.livejournal.com/kc_anathema/gallery/000847zw
This made me think of the Shintaro Kago manga “Fetus Collection”.
Hunter posted one picture, but the whole story relates.
“Fetus Collection”
http://pics.livejournal.com/kc_anathema/gallery/000847zw
by Shintaro Kago.
I agree with Jared by describing this as a “stupid human trick”. Yes, this was her choice and her body, but as several people have already mentioned, it doesn’t show any real talent except for getting attention. Which does seem to be the point.
An interesting alternative question for everyone- would you consider it art if a man masturbated onto a canvas? No shapes or anything creative, just random splats lit with UV so you could see it.