Alicia Shvarts Is An Artist Like Josef Mengele Was A Doctor

From Carole Joffe, Yale Performance Art: Where Are The Grownups?

…Shvarts told the Yale Daily News that her project was not designed for “shock value” and it was not her intention to “scandalize anyone.” She also told the paper that she “believes strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity.”

It is very hard to take such statements seriously. If she truly believed that claiming to get herself pregnant “repeatedly,” only to then terminate those pregnancies, would not shock and scandalize, then she clearly has not a clue about reproductive politics, and should not be sticking her nose, er, her uterus, into a highly charged issue she knows nothing about. Art should be a medium for politics, but the responsibility of the artist is to know something about the politics with which she is engaging.

What useful “conversation” has Shvarts provoked with this project — other than the fact that not all ideas for performance art are good ones? Does anyone — on either side of the abortion debate — gain any new insight from her work? All that seems to be accomplished with this project is a highly visible trivialization of the issue of abortion and a phenomenal insensitivity to women who suffer repeat miscarriages.

As someone who has been a college professor for over thirty years, I know it is not uncommon for eager students to have fanciful ideas for projects, and some of these, for various reasons, simply should not take place. It is the job of faculty mentors to give appropriate guidance and to point out that not everything that is “provocative” is necessarily worth doing. The Yale art department, and her advisor in particular, has failed Aliza Shvarts big-time. And in ways that clearly Ms. Shvarts does not understand, her “artistic” contribution to politics fails the rest of us.

Ms Joffe raises an important point. Simply claiming something as ‘art’ or ‘artistic expression’ does not make it so. As we have noted, real art stands the test of time. That truth has existed since the beginning of recorded time and Alicia Shvarts will not upend that reality and truth.

We all have within us the desire, even the need, to create. We also have within us that our creations be appreciated and valued. That is part of the human condition. Put some crayons and a pad of paper in the hands of a child and watch the magic take place. Creativity, focus, and determination have resulted in millions of refrigerators plastered with those efforts. Those ‘appliance exhibitions’ make for real self esteem- the good kind- as parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles make note of a child’s efforts, accomplishments and individual creativity. Every Father’s Day, dads sport ties and tie clips fashioned with fumbling fingers and designed with every shade of purple, pink and yellow under the sun, with great pride. Why? Because they are wearing a physical and permanent expression of their child’s creativity and efforts on their behalf. We take pride and thrill in the child’s efforts because we take great joy and pride in their child’s creativity, effort and expression.

Conversely, the child is proud of his or her own efforts- “Look! Look what I did!”- as well they should. Sometimes we are the child’s first art teacher. Our help and gentle guidance (‘Why don’t you try that again? What if you used yellow for the sun instead of black”) yields an even greater pride as they realize our advice is just that and not a dictate.  They will have created an expression that transcends their understanding of time. They have created something permanent. This lesson learned, that we can leave a lasting and permanent impression through hard word, effort and determination is one of the most important lessons children learn.

Creativity is not art, in the conventional sense. Creativity is something much more personal and intimate and far more important. Creativity allows us to express ourselves and our lives in a way that is unique to ourselves. Parents blend their creativity and form families and then create a common familial creativity. Our relationship with our beloved and crazy Uncle Joe has far more intimate meaning for us than a Calder mobile, no matter how beautiful.

Alicia Shvarts may have been expressing creativity of a sort, but her ‘artistic expressions‘ were not art any more than the efforts and ‘experiments’ of Josef Mengele were ’science.’

The Yale Art school, home to Alicia Shvarts for the last four years has a long and distinguished record of teaching art. The Universities of Munich and Frankfurt educated Josef Mengele, also have long and distinguished educational pedigrees. Nevertheless, the real art and music that Shvarts and Mengele may have surrounded themselves with, in no way gives their efforts legitimacy.

We wrote, in Blind Poets, Peace And Evil that

…The ‘I’ of life is only relevant when the ‘not-I’ of each individual emerges. What that means is that the individual only becomes relevant when the individual sublimates his instinctive narcissism (see Dr Sanity and Shrinkwrapped) and comes the realization that his or her worth can only be measured in relationship to others.

Babies think, ‘me’. Feed me. Hold me. Change me and so on. That works for infants (and maybe some people in Hollywood)- and no one else. Our eyes become irrelevant if we can only see ourselves. Allowing ourselves to retreat into our perfect fantasy, while a pleasant distraction at times, in reality, only widens the gap with truths and realities that need to be dealt with or understood.

Our personalities become great as we relate to others and not as we relate to ourselves. Lakes become great because of their depth and not the length of their shoreline. A poet does not become a poet by writing words. A poet becomes a poet by having the words he writes become meaningful to others. It is in the understanding that the meaningfulness and depth of his words are part of a compact, an agreement we have with each other, that it is what we have in common, the shared ideals and values, more than anything else, that determines our worthiness.

It is in understanding that it is our universality and not our individuality that we can determine our highest truth. When we live in a world where only our own thoughts, ideas and needs count, we live in a prison. Our greatest joys and achievements have come as the result of sharing and in the union with others. This truth applies in every human endeavor, from love to business. If we allow the conflict between individuality and universality to manifest themselves within us, we suffer great pain- and separation from that which might allow us our greatness…

Alicia Shvarts may believe she has something to say, but when it is all said and done, her efforts are all about preening in the mirror of self absorption.

Alicia Shavrts is an artist like Josef Mengele was a healer. The academic degrees awarded by prestigious institutions of higher learning could not camouflage their dysfunction or failures as human beings. Their ugly ‘creativity’ is not art, no matter how mightily they wanted it to be so.

While it is clear that Alicia Shvarts is no Josef Mengele, they do share a dangerous kind of self absorption. Like Mengele, the psychopathology of an unrepentant and defiant Alicia Shavrts will only escalate.

In 1964, the University of Munich and the University of Frankfurt revoked the degrees awarded Josef Mengele. Perhaps Yale will someday revoke the degree given to Alicia Shvarts.