Aliza Shvartz: Did she or didn’t she? (Only her hairdresser knows for sure!)
Well, maybe not even that many people. This is stale news, but the questions it raises have been festering in my brain for awhile. Does Ms. Shvartz’s ill-fated senior project at Yale constitute art?
I’ve gotta hold my nose and say “yes” on this one. The very idea of her alleged products of conception–which would’ve been lovingly displayed with the goal of starting a dialog about choice and mastery over one’s body–makes me reflexively gag. The blood, plastic cube and video diary of abortions-as-sporting events, in and of themselves, are art.
And so is me peeing in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to protest the war in Iraq. Which is to say, the materials responsible for such an uproar are sooo not art. But the uproar itself is, totally. The web of lunacy that Ms. Shvartz has woven around this nonevent (with a little help from university officials) is an unparalleled example of performance art for the 21st century.
By allegedly admitting that it was all smoke and mirrors to Yale brass, and then asserting that she really did inseminate/clean out her uterus, Ms. Shvartz has masterfully crafted a shitstorm of epic proportions. And in the end, she didn’t even have to unveil the material piece at all. Brava!
Still, I hate performance art with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. And the worst part is, you never know when it’s gonna sneak up on you. There you’ll be, innocently watching a new “play,” then, WHAMMO! “It’s incomprehensible, therefore, it’s art!” sneaks up on you in all of its black trenchcoat-wearing, Smiths-listening glory.
Yep, it happened to me one time in the early ’90s. The scene of the crime was a large university’s black box theater. I was watching a bunch of thesis projects in directing. On comes a “play” whose dramatis personae consists of Man and Woman.
Uh-oh. Gallagher smashing up watermelons is starting to look like George Bernard Shaw.
They’re wearing masks a‘ la Ultraman. And they’re fighting…on the isle of Crete (insert cretin joke here).
Man: Submit to me, you damned woman!
Woman: Never! You cannot oppress me!
Repeat oh, I dunno, 25,000 times and you’ve captured the theatergoing experience that day.
What made it art was the question-and-answer session that followed. A young woman stood up on trembling legs, stammering and blushing as she asked:
“Um, no disrespect to the playwright, but what the hell did I just see?”
The theater erupted in applause and laughter. Brava!
