LIFE LEADS TO BEAUTY

Let us continue with Irenaeus for a moment to pick up his
understanding of life leading to beauty. For Irenaeus, the living human
person is the glory of God because he is God’s artwork.7 The artwork of a
master sculptor gives glory not only to the subject of the sculpture but also
to the artist. The living man is the Creator’s central artwork and thereby
man glorifies the Creator as the master artist. Man full of life radiates the
beauty and glory of the Creator. Living man is inherently beautiful,
according to Irenaeus, because he is the created artwork of the Creator and
he glories the Creator by being fully alive.8
Irenaeus makes this connection between the life of man and the glory of
God through his understanding of living man as a beautiful artwork. One
way to see that this is theologically true is to offer the converse: the death of
man means ugliness.

On April 18, 2008, a Yale University art student, Aliza Shvarts,
reported in the Yale Daily News that for her senior art project she had
inseminated herself artificially as many times as possible over a nine-month
period and then “performed self-induced miscarriages” using
abortifacients.9 After taking these abortifacients, she would then
“experience cramps and heavy bleeding.”10 She collected this bleeding and
intended to display it as her senior art project with video recordings of the
forced miscarriages as well as the cups of blood from the miscarriages.
While one would think this is a hoax, a truly terrible morbid prank (which
at first Yale University officials did), Shvarts produced evidence that she
did this project and wanted it accepted as her senior art project. Far from
being a practical joker, or even a deranged lunatic, she turned out to be an
intelligent and articulate young woman. Shvarts explained that this project
is indeed art in all of its intentional ambiguity, claiming that:
In a more enigmatic, and therefore supposedly profound, way she explained
that “it is the intention of this piece to destabilize the locus of that authorial
act, and in doing so, reclaim it from the heteronormative structures that seek
to naturalize it.”12 She said in an interview with the Yale Daily News, “I
believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not
just a commodity. . . . I think I’m creating a project that lives up to the
standard of what art should be.”13 While her project was derided by the
University and many of her fellow students, she had the support of her
senior project advisor. It is not known whether she produced the project
since conclusive evidence was never provided. Her project has not been
displayed and the faculty members involved have not publicly confirmed or
denied the project, although they were disciplined by university officials.
Nevertheless, Shvarts continues to claim she completed this project and that
it was real art.

The point is to show the tragedy and difficulty of the unexpected and, in
many cases, burdensome pregnancy (in a sense, a new human life should be
burdensome), but also showing the heroic act, the above-and-beyond beauty
of making the right choice. We should not only portray the saccharine
images of chubby, happy babies, but we should also present the profoundly
beautiful image of a baby accepted against the backdrop of the tragedy of
an unexpected and irresponsible pregnancy. Life is full of tragedy, pain,
suffering, and unexpected pregnancies. The pro-life movement needs to say
that in the midst of this culture of death, we must still choose what is
beautiful, what is right, and what is true. We must still play hide and seek
even when the SS troop death march approaches.