The XX Factor: What women really think.

Still Not Buying It

Well, I probably should have known that something was fishy when the Yale Daily News reported that “[f]ew people outside of Yale's undergraduate art department have heard about Shvarts' exhibition.” Yale’s not a big campus: When I was there, we all knew that some girl was keeping live crabs from a Chinatown grocery store in her bathtub; I’m sure that, if someone was regularly “making art” in hers, people would be talking about it.

Dana, you asked if the artwork was successful or not, given what we know now. I think that, based on the criteria I mentioned in my last post, the answer is no. I still don’t get the sense that Shvarts had a compelling—or coherent—message to impart. What does it mean to “draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body”? That’s like a horrible parody of art school speak. What does it even mean? OK, “function” I sort of get: She’s giving a big middle finger to the patriarchal-hegemonic-essentialist-traditionalist view of women as vessels for childbearing. Very Handmaid’s Tale. But where does “form” come in? What—or whose—“ambiguity” is she referring to? Maybe we’ll get a clearer thesis when Shvarts formally presents the work next week.

NB: According to the official Yale statement, the project includes “visual representations, a press release and other narrative materials.” (Emphasis added.)