[octothorp]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

But I'll play: what point about pedagogy in the arts are you trying to make? What about this article is so interesting to you that even though its subject and author are discredited, you still think it's worth discussing? I'd be glad to have a conversation about arts pedagogy with you--for the record, I think the author's point that we should go back to the "good old days" where art students toiled for hours a day over a drafting table is a bit silly--particularly since what he seems to "mean" by this comment is that he favours a practice-centered approach rather than a theory-centered one. In truth, theory and practice always go hand in hand in the art world--art works are interesting because they attempt to make entry into the dialogue in novel ways, or because they engage with the historical present in some critical fashion that merits discussion.

In that context, a return to a technique-based pedagogy amounts to teaching art student an emptied practice worthy of no consideration at all. We'll end up with a generation of artists painting monochromatic nature scenes and still life portraits of fruit baskets. They'll be compositionally elegant but utterly dreadful in every other respect. Nobody wants that.

For the record, I don't believe that the original post was anything other than a baiting, but I still think it's an interesting area of discussion. I think there's a whole genre of shock art that gets far more attention in the media than it deserves. Here's the funny thing about shock art though: the art is not the aborted pregnancies, or the canned fecal material, or the archival record of ejaculatory material, or the allegedly starving dog. The art is the carefully crafted media reaction, and for that reason, the fact that the whole thing was a hoax has little relevance, since the initial reaction is the same; it's merely poorly executed. Now, it's entirely possible that she's completely unsophisticated as an artist and honestly was doing this hoax artwork to try to ask questions about the body, etc. In which case she's a moron who doesn't get the artwork of the people she probably idolizes. I suspect that on some level, she does get it, as if her piece wasn't about the media reaction, she probably wouldn't have issued a press release about it.

Here's how I'd evaluate her work, based on what little I know about it, and my own personal criteria for artwork:
Is it original? She gets low marks here. Combining ideas by a few different artists and adding her own angle to it. Basically a feminist reinterpretation of the british artist who documented his masturbatory ejaculations.
Does it create a reaction? Yes, to an extent. But the fact that it was so quickly revealed as a hoax makes it relatively weak in it's impact.
Is there rigor involved in the work? Hard to say, but there's none evident. A brainstorming session, a half-hour to write a press release, and then finding some blood to paint with.
Does it create a meaningful dialogue? Well, we're having this conversation, so it's creating some sort of dialogue. But likely the sort of dialogue she was trying to create was reflected better in the first few posts on this thread.
Is it cohesive as a piece of artwork? No, it's an absolute boondoggle. Unless her whole point was coming up with an art piece about abortion that was poorly conceived, carried along briefly, and then messily and poorly aborted itself. If that was her intent, then it was brilliantly done, and if I was her, I'd be desperately trying to make the case to my advisers that this was what I was going for all along.