Art and (Wo)man at Yale
By
MICHAEL J. LEWIS
April 24, 2008; Page D9
Has any work of art been more reviled than Aliza Shvarts's senior project at Yale? Andres Serrano's photograph of a crucifix suspended in his own urine did not lack for articulate champions. Nor did Damien Hirst's vitrine with its doleful rotting cow's head. But Ms. Shvarts's performance of "repeated self-induced miscarriages" has left even them silent. According to her project description, she inseminated herself with sperm from voluntary donors "from the 9th to the 15th day of my menstrual cycle . . . so as to insure the possibility of fertilization." Later she would induce a miscarriage by means of an herbal abortifacient. (Or so she claimed; whether she actually did any of this remains unclear.)
It is often said that great achievement requires in one's formative years two teachers: a stern taskmaster who teaches the rules and an inspirational guru who teaches one to break the rules. But they must come in that order