Well I'll be... very strange topics here... great topic title btw

An artwork this self-evident? Uberdog sums up her idea perfectly as childish. She probably took a process used to question issues of morality; that is to depict the act with utter intensity. Yet somehow she failed to realize the statement/idea/hoax has nothing to say. It answers a real and valid question with an enigma if at all. Personally if her work existed I'd compare it with a snuff film rather than abortion. So 15 minutes of infamy? Next time she should try doing a handstand.

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Aliza Shvarts' existence does not invalidate Marcel Duchamp. Just like Uwe Boll's films don't render Andrei Tarkovsky's works meaningless.

Aliza Shvarts is to Marcel Duchamp as Uwe Boll is to Andrei Tarkovsky? I can get behind that. (As I said above, I think, she's only a student, so one shouldn't be so hard on her for that.)

It was a well-executed prank. I do think she's quite good at drawing attention to herself. That's a useful skill in its own right.

In that she created a demand for a product that did not exist, it was pure marketing skillz0rz.

Marketing and something like special effects.

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Originally posted by UberDog:
Art isn't supposed to provoke questions, it's supposed to disclose something essential about existence.

I suppose what you meant regarding questions was really more like "art isn't supposed to generate 'buzz' "?

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Originally posted by Earthless:
Well I'll be... very strange topics here... great topic title btw

An artwork this self-evident? Uberdog sums up her idea perfectly as childish. She probably took a process used to question issues of morality; that is to depict the act with utter intensity. Yet somehow she failed to realize the statement/idea/hoax has nothing to say.

I'm cherry-picking this to ask whether some might be unwilling to examine what her hoax says? Before it was disclosed as a hoax, my own reaction had to do with what she may have put her own body through. My other, undeveloped questions have to do with what the hoax has to say about the continuing theme of alienation-from-our-own bodies (a Gibsonian theme if there was ever one) that we see repeated over and over in the form of advocates of piercings and tattoings, advocates of self-amputation and self-augmentation (Stelarc?): something results from *those* practices for the practitioner that somehow re-connects their brain/spirit/homonculus/self to a previously numb body.

I find the theoretical art project horrifying from the point of view of what a young woman in this day and age might be capable of doing to herself (I'm leaving the fictional embryos out of this; none of the herbal abortifacients are fun things to ingest), but also because my initial response was belief. It has to say something that I was willing to believe that she actually did what she said she did.

Post-hoax, I find pre-hoax reaction fascinating for what it ended up forcing others (especially pro-Choice advocates) to say, particularly considering how pro-choice advocates are repeatedly mis-interpreted to be either wanting to force women to have abortions or wanting to allow women to use abortion as birth control. Shvarts's hoax enacts that last supposition and gets the fact that it is not part of the pro-choice platform out on the table in a new way.

This incident, I think, can become useful if you're willing to engage with it. There are questions to be asked. Just because you're horrified by the implications doesn't mean it's not worth others' attention.

PS:

Am I wrong to connect Shvarts's fictional project with this fictional episode of vivisection?:

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A person in the audience during a Cincinnati show on the VIVIsectVI tour mistakenly thought that the stuffed dog CHUD, which Ogre ripped apart on stage in order to show the horrors of vivisection, was a real animal and called the police. After showing up backstage and finding that CHUD was not real, they basically tried to find a reason to be there and after some harsh words were exchanged Ogre, cEvin, and their tour manager spent the night in jail on disorderly conduct charges. Dwayne, who was reportedly actually rolling a joint as the cops came in, managed to escape due to his unique power of invisibility.

from the Skinny Puppy FAQ.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Justy,

I think the fact that so many people (judging by the comments on the site) didn't stop to think that it more than likely was a hoax (can you really imagine a tutor saying "sure, go for it") says a lot about people's perceptions of artists, "liberals" and perhaps Yale.

Well, the first thought my wife had, upon learning that the advisor for Shvarts's senior thesis was a lecturer (i.e. part time or otherwise not tenure-track), was that the advisor would probably be gone the next year, if the hoax had been true.

And my boss thought it more likely that someone from RPI would have done something like what Shvarts did.

I think it is potentially an interesting point how people's opinion of art and artists is such that they would believe an art student would go ahead and do something like that. I believed, at first anyway. It seemed to fit with the way some people I knew back in university appeared to think.

Am I the only one who now finds even her name suspect? Shvarts -> Shv arts -> Shove arts. Silly, yes, but I can't look at her name now without thinking about it.

It's probably just a variation on spelling "Schwartz".

After reading this, I'm almost convinced the woman is brilliant.

Freak out yeah. I tip my hat off to her.

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Originally posted by Justy:
After reading this, I'm almost convinced the woman is brilliant.

In my country there is problem,
and that problem is the science.
They take everybody's Genesis,
and they never give it back.

In my country there is problem,
and that problem is the liberal feminist Jew girl.
they take everybody's fetus,
and they eat them on a matzah.

Throw the Jew girl down the well,
so America can be free.
You must grab her by her fallopian tubes,
then we have a big party!

I am still trying to find out why I am so uncomfortable with the hoax. It probably is because the intention had to be explained to me (se Justy's link) to give it a meaning I can relate to.

And maybe because the matter makes me, consciously or unconsciously, uncomfortable.

If I had to come up with a similar hoax I would compare it to the ID sniper . The difference for me here is that I saw the ID sniper in an art exhibition, together with the story of the China Police exhibition, which made the intention quite clear. I thought it a brilliant piece of art.

Well, it is in its own way the grandest Dead Baby joke of all...

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Originally posted by Sentinel400:
I don't where where to start when you guys go off on your asinine Art critiques. I suppose i could start with this:

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Originally posted by UberDog:
Art isn't supposed to provoke questions, it's supposed to disclose something essential about existence. She's doing politics.

Once you get past food and shelter, nothing is more "essential to existence' than questions.
As for the endless conflating of the Art World and the Art Market: Aliza Shvarts' existence does not invalidate Marcel Duchamp. Just like Uwe Boll's films don't render Andrei Tarkovsky's works meaningless.

To clarify, it isn't supposed to provoke silly societal questions. Art as a political statement is inherently corrupt. And this wasn't even that.

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Originally posted by Justy:

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Why don't you just paint economics while you're at it?

In case the image below doesn't hotlink right, it's Van Gogh's "The Potato Eaters," found at the

This is a painting of a consequence of economics, not a painting of economics itself. If you wanted to paint econ you could just have a Botticelli rendering of Meynard Kynes masturbating.

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Originally posted by Kradlum:
I think the fact that so many people (judging by the comments on the site) didn't stop to think that it more than likely was a hoax (can you really imagine a tutor saying "sure, go for it") says a lot about people's perceptions of artists, "liberals" and perhaps Yale.

I think the fact that so many poeple on this site are talking about it means she accomplished what she wanted.

I'm saying that her intent wasn't art but attention.

And that isn't art.

If it is, we must accept Paris Hilton as a realist master.

I'm not sure who the surrealist master would be. Maybe Tom Green circa 1999.

Just out of curiosity, where did all of you proclaimative and opinionated people get your art history and critique degrees?

I know enough to know that I myself don't have a pat definition of what art "is", so that I am willing to at least consider that it might be something I don't like.

As performance art peices go, this is a gem.

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If it is, we must accept Paris Hilton as a realist master.

I'm not sure who the surrealist master would be. Maybe Tom Green circa 1999.

If PH werew capable of putting a modicum of thought into her actions, than maybe...

Now, the "Jackass" crew, they're the surrealist masters.

OR this guy.