Shvarts' project, while vile, has definitely gotten a lot of people talking, which we suppose was the intended goal. But just how controversial is it in the pantheon of "controversial college art projects"? We take a quick look back and rate recent collegiate attempts to facilitate "dialog" via "art" on a 1 to 10 "Scandal Scale."
• University of Maine student Susan Crane places hundreds of flags on the floor of her school's student center in a maze-like pattern to see if people will tramp all over them. Ninety-five percent of students sidestep the flags, but a bunch of Marines and Vietnam vets still accuse her of being an America-hating terrorist. SCANDAL RATING: 4
• A student Mount Holyoke takes 3,000 pictures off of her classmates' Facebook profiles and creates a public collage. Some complain of feeling "violated." SCANDAL RATING: 1. (Seriously, this is what passes for "controversy" at a Seven Sisters school?)
• A University of Rhode Island art student attempts to gauge how accepted homosexuality is on campus by suspending from the ceiling photos of a "man masturbating against a backdrop of gay pornography." Says one student: "Ballsy ... literally." Says another: "The statue of David is art, this is porno; I don't want to see your dick." SCANDAL RATING: 2
• An art piece titled "Low Rider Tables," consisting of "three low-to-the-ground reading tables with customized chairs ... to commemorate the low rider car culture of Latino Youth in California," splits the Chicano/Latino population of San Jose State when a student tries to install it on the fourth floor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Joint Library. One of the customized chairs features a woman in short shorts and a midriff-bearing top. "Although car culture exists in our community, it certainly should not be the sole art piece representing our community," says one protester. On the flip side, a representative from Street Low Magazine who was contracted to give input on the tables claims, "customizing cars can be a family affair, where the car is worked on by all members of the family as an act of solidarity which is then entered into contests and becomes a symbol of pride." SCANDAL RATING: 5
• Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson, a student at the Ontario College of Art and Design and the son of a famous Icelandic sculptor, spends a night in jail and is suspended after he places a sculpture that looks like a bomb outside of the Royal Ontario Museum and posts footage of the fake bombing on YouTube. Most students protest the suspension; a retired Icelandic government official even pitches in $25,00 for bail. SCANDAL RATING: 6 (Bonus point because the Royal Ontario Museum had to cancel a black-tie AIDS benefit that night.)
Okay, babykiller, you win this round. But as sure as there's a God in heaven, some kid at Dartmouth is probably busy boffing her brother for a forthcoming multimedia installation on incest as we speak.