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''Period Pieces'' - err, snatching a glimpse at menstrual art...

Gloriana

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My mattress has been ruined by it, I have two sets of sheets destroyed by it and a whole handful of underpants that aren't so cute anymore.

Every month I have to check before I leave anyone's bathroom to make sure I haven't left my own 'paintings' on their toilet seats and since I'm at too much of a risk for toxic shock to use tampons I get to sit right in it for hours when I go to the movies or on a long drive.

I'm not afraid of it, I'm not grossed out by it, I just see it all the time. Yes, women can create babies inside themselves and give them life with this blood and we blossom from girls to women once we start bleeding. Maybe we can even handle the sight of blood better than men sometimes, maybe it is one of those things women have to endure that makes us strong just like men are. Yes, I get all this. I GET IT.

But seriously, do I need to use my free time to go stare at swans and other jaunty designs created by the careful artistic manipulation of another woman's menstrual blood to get it? Fuck no. The wings on my Always overnights are symbolic enough of soaring womanhood for me, thanks.
 
T

ThatGirl

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Menstrual blood is not as simple as cutting your hand. It is the dead tissues of your womb being purged from your body, like feces or urine.

Though I suppose that would make great art too?
 

Queen Kat

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This art is like how some guy decided to ejaculate on paper and call that art.
 

Thalassa

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There was this woman once in the 70s...was it Annie Sprinkle?...one of them, anyway...who basically sat in a box, she had a shirt on, but no pants...and people could come look at her vagina by looking under a curtain that covered the box.

That's what this made me think of. Actually, I think this is worse. Women playing in their menstrual blood...is just...yeah. And I have no issues with vaginas either, but painting with bodily excretions seems a bit off to me, especially when it's something you have to deal with every month for 30 or 40 years anyway.
 

five sounds

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Placenta art and "Menstrala" in one day?! Heh...Whoa....Oh...Oh God...

 

Showbread

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Eeeeewwwww! Why is this real? Ugh. Who decided this was a good idea? :shock::ack!::sick:
 

kyli_ryan

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I don't know if this is too graphic--- but here's another example of vaginal art for you.

 

Codex

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Warning: Gross

Any opinions regarding this:
 

Chthonic

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Okay if you are making art use a medium worth using and make art worth looking at that says something other than I've touched my bodily excretions, what a statement! There is no 'shame' associated with menstruation so I don't get what that's about. Surely society has better expressions of creativity than mucking about with excreta.
 

Flâneuse

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This reminds me of the scene in Ghost World where a student brings in a tampon in a teacup as her art project and the teacher praises it as "a shocking image of repressed femininity".
Ghost World: Art Classes - YouTube

Most menstrual art I've seen so far hasn't been very impressive, technically (blood would likely be limiting and difficult to work with) or conceptually. However, I'm sure there's some out there that's visually interesting and not a simplistic and/or gimmicky P.O.S. (like the "literally facing my shame" one at the top of this page, which is IMHO laughably ridiculous, almost like it's a parody of menstrual art).
 

Kullervo

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Well, the ladies have to think of something creative to do for a week :D

It could be worse. I actually like a few of the design patterns.
 

Qlip

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The thing with conceptual art is that it can be very underwhelming and schlocky if it's not technically executed well. Honestly, I think that Facing My Shame piece could be pretty impressive if she could finger paint worth a damn, and knew anything about taking a good photo, and played the concept out even more. It *is* supposed to be aesthetic after all. It scans more like a protest.
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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The thing with conceptual art is that it can be very underwhelming and schlocky if it's not technically executed well. Honestly, I think that Facing My Shame piece could be pretty impressive if she could finger paint worth a damn, and knew anything about taking a good photo, and played the concept out even more. It *is* supposed to be aesthetic after all. It scans more like a protest.

Maybe this is just my NT weirdness, but I don't even find a painting in menstrual blood to be all that shocking. I admire the Dada tradition out of which this kind stuff grew, but I honestly don't feel like it goes far enough. I don't know if that's just because it can't be shocking once the floodgates have been opened, or that there are less taboos, but I don't think this kind of thing has the edge it once had.


Now, if the menstrual blood had been used to paint something that somehow contrasts with the association with the menstrual blood in a truly disorientating way, that would be something. But there's got to be more than just the menstrual blood.

Same with fecal matter. Urine I do not think would work at all, unless perhaps it involved snow in a refrigerated chamber. Frank Zappa made a song about that, I believe.

What I would really like is to see a semen painting (I'm not even joking... you could do something like the sap of the Tree of Life at the end of The Fountain.) A painting with female ejaculate would be pretty shocking, too.

I think someone who deliberately cut themselves to make a painting in blood would be far weirder and shocking than circumstance where it is naturally excreted.

So there are a few avenues people could go with bodily fluid that are unexplored which would be way more shocking than this. When Marcel Duchamp submitted a urinal to an art exhibition, and labeled it "Fountain", people in the interwar were pissed off. It was genuinely shocking to people. For this to work, it has to be something that would have the equivalent reaction today. I don't think menstrual blood cuts it, given all the tampon commercials I've seen on network TV.
 

Qlip

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Maybe this is just my NT weirdness, but I don't even find a painting in menstrual blood to be all that shocking. I admire the Dada tradition out of which this kind stuff grew, but I honestly don't feel like it goes far enough. I don't know if that's just because it can't be shocking once the floodgates have been opened, or that there are less taboos, but I don't think this kind of thing has the edge it once had.

...

That's the point of what I said, as art menstrual blood could be so much more interesting than shocking, which has lost a lot of currency in this day and age. The artist couldn't see this.
 

EJCC

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The thing with conceptual art is that it can be very underwhelming and schlocky if it's not technically executed well. Honestly, I think that Facing My Shame piece could be pretty impressive if she could finger paint worth a damn, and knew anything about taking a good photo, and played the concept out even more. It *is* supposed to be aesthetic after all. It scans more like a protest.
Yeah I agree with this. Like she assumed the medium was shocking enough that it wouldn't matter that she's not any good at finger painting.
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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That's the point of what I said, as art menstrual blood could be so much more interesting than shocking, which has lost a lot of currency in this day and age. The artist couldn't see this.

Meh, I wasn't expressing disagreement, although I did word the intro oddly, I guess. Mostly I just wanted to come up with more shocking scenarios. I am fond of my snow-pee freezer idea in particular.
 

Qlip

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Meh, I wasn't expressing disagreement, although I did word the intro oddly, I guess. Mostly I just wanted to come up with more shocking scenarios. I am fond of my snow-pee freezer idea.

Ah, K.
 
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