Because, look, I get as much as anyone that social norms in the U.S. about nudity are a little more Puritanical than average. I haven't seen one of my parents naked since I was old enough to remember, because, when I was old enough to remember, my mom made a point of covering up like Eve in the Garden. To a degree, I wish my mother was a little less ashamed of her body — the way Tracie's mom is — because I feel like I would probably be less ashamed of mine if she was. And so my house is filled with female nudes, and I have tried with varying degrees of success to overcome my own body-consciousness with boyfriends and lovers and that's how I live out my mother's body issues and my own.

On the other hand, Leigh isn't chronicling his mother's unselfconscious nudity in the way that women in other countries are simply nakedly themselves. Leigh chronicle's his mother's sexual nudity, her romps in bed with much younger men, her stripping, them "staging" non-maternal kisses for the camera. It's a peek into his slightly-filthy subconscious, and it's as disturbing and grainy as the photographs he produces of it. And so I like it, and I shudder at it, and I keep looking for more meaning in it. His self-portraiture is far more self-conscious and stilted than the photographs of his sexual mother and — while I don't buy a word of it when he tells his interviewer that "the camera provides needed distance between him and his mother and, conversely, serves as a catalyst 'to sort of push the relationship'" — you have to admit that for all that they are disturbing, that perturbation doesn't emanate from the artist himself.

But, if I never have to contemplate again, as the BlackBook interviewer did, whether Ledare's mother has ever suggested sex with him, I'm also really cool with that.

A Model Mom [BlackBook]
Photograph courtesy of Rivington Arms

Imagine walking into a guy's home and seeing this on the wall. Would you feel that he was a gentleman who cared about women, about their hopes and dreams?

What if you knew that there was booze inside?

This is a chair. Classy, huh?

This is a desk. Note that when you store your pencils you are stabbing this bisected woman in the uterus. Perhaps that's the point. Pun intended.

What's for dinner? Lemme guess: This dude likes eating out.

Cochrane shows Tilley as anything but a shrinking violet. "There is something so active and punchy about Tilley's language, that it seems very difficult to imagine her doing anything that she didn't want to do," Cochrane writes. But what about Freud's children, whom he painted in the nude as teenagers? His daughter Rose said of posing in the nude for her pops, "People think there must be an Oedipal thing because of Sigmund Freud, but there isn't." You're right, it's an Electra thing! Freud's other daughter, Esther, who posed for him at 16, said she got to know her father through his painting her. "We'd never lived in the same city before…I simply took my clothes off and sat on a sofa when he asked. It never occurred to me to be ashamed."

There is something to be said for not being ashamed of one's nudity, but in the context of a father gazing upon his offspring's naked flesh for hours on end, it must be said that the matter is a little more complex than Esther is allowing. Just as the recent Australian scandal over nude photographs of young girls shows.

Here's the story: Police shut down a Sydney art exhibition of photographer Bill Henson's work because it featured naked photos of 12 and 13 year old girls. Even the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, came out against Henson, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. "I find [the photographs] absolutely revolting…Whatever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff - frankly I don't think there are any - just allow kids to be kids."

Rudd's assumption is that there is something sexual or at least sinister going on between photographer and subject that robs the subject of her innocence. Again, I don't think the matter is that cut and dry. Though it is undeniable that there are power dynamics at play, it remains to be seen whether those dynamics are necessarily destructive.

[Photograph of Lucien Freud's "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping" by Martin Goodwin]

The Eye Of The Muse [Guardian]
Rudd Revolted [Sydney Morning Herald]

Earlier: Being A Muse Kinda Sucks

The YDN also asked a bunch of doctors whether Aliza's little stunt was medically possible. Dr. Edward Funai, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology and chief of obstetrics at Yale-New Haven Hospital totally pwns Shvarts. "The most likely scenario," he told the YDN, "is that all Shvarts was seeing every month was her own menstrual blood. Half of the Yale community sees art of similar quality when taking care of their monthly hygiene." (Oh, snap!)

Yale brass are standing firm on their decision to keep Shvarts's work out of the exhibition. They told her last week that in order to have her work show, she would have to confirm that "her project was 'a work of fiction,' [admitted] that she did not inseminate herself or induce miscarriages and promis[ed] that no human blood will appear in the project." Shvarts would agree to none of those conditions, and so her work was not shown.

Since there was little to no hubbub at the exhibition, I'm hoping that this will soon disappear into the internet ether and I won't have to see those scuffed, fringed cowboy boots ever, ever again. Unless, on graduation day, she decides to smear her cap and gown with menstrual blood to protest Yale's suppression of her ideas — then I just really hope someone tapes that and sends it to us, with or without the cowboy boots.

After Buildup, A Quiet Opening [Yale Daily News]
Experts Shed Doubt On Shvarts' Claim [Yale Daily News]

Earlier:
Avant Garde Assholes
One Thing Is Certain: Right Now, Yale University & Aliza Shvarts '08 Are 100% Annoying
Aliza Shvarts: The Halloween How-To For Harvard Students
Yale: Abortion Art Piece Was "Creative Fiction"
Just How Do You Give Yourself An Herbal Abortion?
Yale Senior Undergoes Multiple Self-Induced Miscarriages In The Name Of Art

Shvarts stood by her project, calling the University's statement "ultimately inaccurate."...But Shvarts reiterated Thursday that she repeatedly used a needleless syringe to insert semen into herself. At the end of her menstrual cycle, she took abortifacient herbs to induce bleeding, she said. She said she does not know whether or not she was ever pregnant. "No one can say with 100-percent certainty that anything in the piece did or did not happen," Shvarts said, "because the nature of the piece is that it did not consist of certainties."

University Calls Art Project A Fiction; Shvarts '08 Disputes Yale's Claim [Yale Daily News]

Actually, "gullible weenies" isn't the term that was used, but that's pretty much what it amounted to. Here's the full statement from Klasky:

Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art. Her art project includes visual representations, a press release and other narrative materials. She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman's body.

She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art.

Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns.

Yale Press Release [Yale]

Earlier: Yale Senior Undergoes Multiple Self-Induced Miscarriages In The Name Of Art
Just How Do You Give Yourself An Herbal Abortion?

We've all met young men and women like Aliza Shvarts: They come from relatively happy, upper-middle-class families, and are so desperate to be "edgy" and "crazy" that they perform a series of stunts — whether through drug experimentation, sexual exploration, or bad performance art — to differentiate themselves from their hopelessly bourgie peers and parents. The problem with Shvarts' little art project, however, is that her need to rebel has potentially big ramifications outside her ivory tower of academia. (One assumes that Shvarts used, at least in part, the abortifacient RU-486, a prescription-only drug that some politicians want added to the list of Schedule I controlled substances.) Plus, conservative bloggers are already up in arms and using Aliza's capriciousness to support their anti-abortion agendas. (At 9:00am this morning Shvarts' name had 53 hits on Google; as of 11:52am, it had 291.) And though the Buckley School valedictorian claims that she wants her piece to be a medium for "politics and ideologies," it's not like she's shedding light on an obscure subject. People debate the ethics of abortion constantly, and possibly harming your body by forcing it to miscarry repeatedly? Yeah, that's not helping the discourse.

Molly Clark-Barol, a Yale student and commenter on the YDH's website, sums up Shvarts's egocentrism better than I could: "Congratulations, Aliza Shvarts '08: you have single-handedly trivialized not only an entire generation and a half's fight to gain and retain the right to choose, through harassment and against massive odds, but also history of women's struggles, not only politically, but with the emotional, moral, and spiritual impacts of the choice to terminate a pregnancy. You also spit upon every couple who has tried, and failed, sometimes repeatedly, to have children. it is the emotional impact of these struggles, emotional impact that you shamelessly exploit, not explore, in your senior project."

[Image via Soapbox Event]

Related: Absolutely Fascinating [Bitch, PhD]

• A source says Jake Gyllenhaal is not OK following the death of his good friend Heath Ledger. He's "taking it harder than most people" and it's "obviously a major trauma." So sad. [People]
  
• The story of the impostor pretending to be Heath Ledger's father — talking to Tom Cruise and getting rooms booked at a fancy hotel — will just make your blood boil. [NY Post]
  
• Reports are coming in that Michelle Williams drove Heath Ledger to rehab last March; Heath refused to get out of the car. [Us Magazine]
  
• Reclusive actor Wes Bentley (American Beauty) has issued a rare statement, remembering his friend Heath as a "a Vibrant Man, a Brave Actor, a Passionate Father and a Friend Forever." The two starred in the 2002 film Four Feathers. [People]
  
• Sarah Jessica Parker is getting into the reality TV game: Her pitch is to create a Project Runway-type show, but for the art world. Ooh, highbrow. Um, Sketch And The City? [Variety]

• Britney Spears recovered from her chaotic Monday night by buying a new Mercedes on Tuesday. Beep beep! [TMZ, TMZ]
• Meanwhile, Britney's mom is visiting her (maybe trying for an intervention?) and things are not going well — they've been arguing the whole time. [People]
• Of course, Sam Lutfi, Britney's Great Manipulator™, is saying that Brit's parents have "an agenda" and "don't fit in" and only see her three times a year. [The Sun]
• Joan Collins, 74, was seen checking out a valet's backside after lunch in Beverly Hills last week. Frisky minx! [Page Six]
• Cameron Diaz is hooking up with Scott Speedman? The two were seen "frolicking on the beach" and "smooching" in the Bahamas. Any Ben Covington fans here? [Gatecrasher]
• LOL blind item! "Which model-turned-actress, who is on her second actor husband, relaxes between shoots with a bong made from an enormous two-liter plastic soda bottle?" [Gatecrasher]
• A flight attendant says that when Lindsay Lohan was on her plane, she drank like a fish: "I served her double vodkas." Sober, shmober. [Rush & Molloy]
• Jessica Alba's unborn spawn: Apparently a boy. [Rush & Molloy]
• Amy Winehouse's father: "I'm not sure the Grammys are going to happen. I don't want her to go — I think it might be a bit too soon for her." Crap! Well she needs to get well, so as long as it takes... [Mirror]
• Paula Abdul will not perform live during the Super Bowl — due to her stage jitters and fragile emotional state. Wow. Is anyone else in shock that she has a new single? [MSNBC]
• Jessica Simpson and Tony Romo are still hot and heavy, can't keep their hands off each other, etc., if you care. [MSNBC]
• A witness claims that Daniel Smith, son of Anna Nicole, was not a drug addict but a "brilliant" young man unhappy living in his mother's shadow. [AP]
• Ducati has made a new motorcycle: A $72,500 titanium, magnesium and carbon fiber superbike; Tom Cruise us the first on the lest to get one. He feels the need, the need for speed. Obvs. [MSNBC]
• Actress Julie Christie, 66, seems to have secretly married her partner, journalist Duncan Campbell, whom she has been with for 28 years. Romantic, no? [Daily Mail]
• The artist who sculpted Britney Spears giving birth naked and Paris Hilton nude and dead has now rendered Oprah in bronze on an Egyptian sarcophagus. Nude, of course. [Daily Mail]
• Something about Verne Troyer's ex-wife being addicted to drugs and on the verge of suicide? Or just some crazy dude shouting stuff. [Perez Hilton]
• Fire broke out at the Duchess of York's home! Someone left a scented candle burning in the bathroom... Fergie wasn't at home so maybe her teenage daughters are to blame? [Telegraph]
• David Beckham's face is on the best-selling condom in China. He doesn't endorse the brand but really ought to be flattered that dudes want him on their junk. As do ladies. [News.com.au]

Picasso's indiscretions are even more well known, and his artistic relationship to women is more complex. He hopped from several wives and mistresses throughout his life, and when his relationship to then-wife Olga Khokhlova was disintegrating, he painted her with "either distortion or radical dismemberment and reconstruction." His mistress at the time, though, the 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter, was painted without a "trace of anger or misogyny."

Both Picasso and Klimt are somewhat unassailable as great artists. Does it affect your view of their work to know that the women in their lives suffered far greater indignities than the women on their canvases? Who deserves to be in the Fine Art Hall Of Shame, as far as misogyny goes?

Gustav Klimt: A Lover Of Women [The Economist]
Picasso's life:
His Middle Years [The Economist]

• Apparently, many men are still following that archaic, women-as-property tradition of asking their future-father-in-laws for "permission' to marry their girlfriends. Something tells us Amy Winehouse's partner-in-crack-addiction, Blake Fielder-Civil, did not. [Salon]
  
• Researchers have discovered that a low-fat diet cuts your risk of developing ovarian cancer. Unfortunately the benefits only start to kick in after four years of depriving yourself of all the delicious things in life. [MSNBC]
  
• Antidepressants cool hot flashes? Awesome. That means we have an excuse to take happy drugs 4Eva! [NY Times]

• Give your grandma a hug! Experts say that post-menopausal women across the world actually do much of the work in society and in some cases, anthropologists find that 60-year old women are just as physically-strong as 20-year olds. [Salon]
• More women are blasting off into outer space than ever before. You know what must suck? Taking off that huge spacesuit in order to change your tampon. [CBS News]
• CBS' Early Show did a segment on how families can afford to have a stay-at-home parent, since 70 percent of those polled thought it was the best lifestyle for couples with kids. Of course, the show focused on mom staying home. Ugh. [CBS News]
• A French woman was overwhelmed with emotion upon seeing a $2 million painting and planted a big wet one on the canvas, leaving a lipstick mark. She said the red smooch made the painting better. Ha-ha, that bitch is crazy but sort of awesome! [Reuters]

The collection includes a piece painted entirely of Hershey's chocolate, which reminded us of a friend of ours who used to paint exclusively with her own menstrual blood, which should maybe be the theme of Taylor's next small collection. Oh my God though, please read the story: it is insane. Four year olds who start collections in "happy colors," moms who use their son's art knowledge to undermine friends and prey on party guests, kids who get carried away at auctions and keep bidding just to keep the price going up, and the inevitable backlash from snooty gallery owners. Happy Friday, poors. Here's your first gift.

Small Collectors [WSJ]

• A bill criminalizing abortion in the event that Roe vs. Wade is overturned is on its way to Mississippi governor Haley Barbour. [Feministing]

• Is fish safe to eat during pregnancy or not? The Brits and Americans are at odds. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

• Law-enforcement officials may not need seminal fluid in order to identify and convict rapists. [BBCNews]

• Your boyfriend's snoring costs you two years of life. [The Sun]

• The first large-scale exhibition of feminist art is a thrill, says critic Holland Cotter. [NYTimes]

• One woman in the Times' obit section today! Rufina Amaya, activist against slaughter in El Salvador, dies. [NYTimes]