Saturday, April 19, 2008

Art isn't Nice! Art does have to have value to society though!

Woo, final papers are all coming due and I have no time.

The Yale abortion art thing is disgusting. I hope to God she is lying and the school never signed off on it, but I would not be surprised if at least one prof approved the idea. For those of you who don't know what I am talking about, click here.
Honestly, I will argue a strongly pro-baby stance with you all day long, but for those on the dead-baby side, this has to be a setback. It just shows how quickly the jump can go from "mother's life" to "on demand" to "contraception" to finally just being a sick form of "art."
Ladies, I love you, but as a guy something about "that time of the month" is just unappetizing to me. I know its a natural thing, I won't like you less as a person for it or anything like that, but i would prefer to be kept as in the dark about it as possible.
This is not art. Art is a thing of beauty and workmanship which cannot be easily replicated. Art has to have value to society, be it painting, photography, music, theater, sculpture, or anything else. Putting "blood" in a box and making a video of your period is not art, it might maybe be science, but it is not art. Is it provocative, yes, but it has no worth to society. Somebody should ask a couple who have suffered a miscarriage what they think of this, I wish I knew somebody around here I was comfortable asking.
Hoax or real, her project is profoundly disgusting. If a monkey throws it's poo at a wall long enough, somebody will call it art. This is a conversation that could and should have been started in a much better way. If this is a hoax, she would have been better off claiming it was a representation, and if it is real, I consider her a murderer.

Edit: To clarify, I am NOT saying that a womans body is not beautiful, I am saying that a box of blood is not. People should never be considered art, that is dehumanizing.

11 comments:

Rachel said...

I consider her a murderer as well, because of my stance on abortion - which, if it is true that she induced the miscarriages, is what it is.

Two of my cousins have miscarried, but I'm not going to ask them how the feel about this, simply because I saw how hard it was for them to lose their babies... asking them what they think about someone who willingly induced a miscarriage all "in the name of art" is something I know will not sit well with them.

How does someone even come up with something this insane?

Amelia said...

The problem is that this discussion was NOT being had. So I support her decision to go through with this, although I was somewhat concerned for her health.

And you know what I find disgusting? The dominant American society that teaches women to be ashamed of their bodies and their bodies' natural functions and prevents discourse about how women fit into society and relate to art.

"This is not art. Art is a thing of beauty and workmanship which cannot be easily replicated. Art has to have value to society..."

Right Tyler. Women and their bodies are not things of beauty. Women and their bodies have no value to society.

Those sentiments are disgusting. This post is disgusting.

Amelia said...

Also, I like how you no longer use your real name when writing posts/comments. Classy.

Rachel said...

Amelia - I'm a girl, and even I find that time of the month in no way a beautiful thing... so it's only understandable that men don't want to hear about it... hell, i dont even want it. Art is supposed to be beautiful - miscarraiges and that time of the month are in no way beautiful. Miscarriages are tragedies not art.

Amelia said...

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is the truth. I find nothing disgusting about that part of my womanhood, and I am sorry that you have been programmed to feel that it is something to be ashamed of.

Rachel said...

I didn't say I was ashamed of it. I do believe I said "I dont want it" - because it is a nuisance. It's not a question of beauty or not.

lindsay said...

I think society conditions women into thinking menstruation is shameful, when it's not. Lots of natural things about our bodies are conditioned to be shameful by society - cellulite, not perfect teeth, the pubescent boy's accidental erection, menstruation, menopause. But menses is reinforced again and again and again as bad by society, media, popular entertainment.

It was last year that the horrendous Superbad was released that reinforced a rape culture (get the girl drunk so you can have sex with her? boo.) and reinforced the idea that women are supposed to contain and conceal everything that has to do with menses - god forbid it get on a guy at some point. OMG gross.

If people talk about it and stop mystifying it, we can accept it as normal and part of life (because it IS).

Amelia said...

How is being considered art dehumanizing? According to you, art is "...a thing of beauty...[that] has to have value to society..."

How is that dehumanizing at all? Perhaps your definition of what constitutes art is too narrow. And I'd say that's your problem, no one else's.

Anonymous said...

I agree that it is not art. In fact, my initial reaction (as a liberal in favor of both protection of the arts and pro-choice politics) was that this young woman's actions could jeopardize the legitimization of both of those fields.

I do however disagree with you that to call the human body art is dehumanizing. Art in itself is a strictly human act of expression. To use ones body to express oneself is indeed art none the less. Dance and other forms of performance art are indeed art.

Also art is not supposed to be beautiful. Art is using a medium (being simple and concrete like paint, marble, or wood, or complex and abstract like the production amplification and arrangement of tones in music, or the motions of the human body) to express emotions or sentiments familiar to the audience. It has nothing to do with difficulty or beauty. "The Scream" is pretty ugly, but even I could paint a decent replica pretty quickly.

Then again, I am an art student with about 12 years of artistic training)

Amelia said...

I do not understand how you feel this isn't art, Andrew. You say that the human body can be used as art, but you seem to mean only if it is used in certain, very specific ways.

If you think about it, art changes. What is considered art changes. Back in the days of cave paintings, humans did not consider sculptures to be art (they did not really think much about art, I'm sure) because sculptures had never been created before. In the early 19th century, photography would not have been considered art because photography was not widely available yet. So perhaps some people just have a narrow field of vision when it comes to what is art.

My graphic design class just did a whole long thing about "what is art" for an event we're advertising.

I think that both you and Tyler seem to espouse very narrow views of what is art. How sad.

Anonymous said...

I misspoke and misrepresented my thoughts. What this woman has done is indeed art, but I do not believe that I can condone it or defend it. I think that her display can potentially do more harm than good.