By: Hamilton Reed Armstrong

On April 17, 2008 an article appeared in the Yale Daily News stating that art student, Aliza Shvarts “08”, was presenting a video and artifact project  as her final senior art  thesis which records her past nine months activities of artificial inseminations and subsequent self induced abortions. Other than the videos of her self “at work,” there is to be an arrangement of cloth soaked in the blood, fruit of these abortions.  The “art experience” is to be included in the annual show sponsored by the Yale undergraduate art department at the Holcombe T. Green jr. Hall on Chapel Street.

Asked to comment as to why she is exhibiting this work, Ms. Shvarts replied, “It was to provide inquiry” … “I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideology, not just a commodity” … “I think that I am creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art ought to be.”

The traditional view of “Art,” defined by Webster’s dictionary as “the conscious use of skill and creative imagination esp. in the production of aesthetic objects,” has been hijacked by revolutionary forces for political use as counter cultural propaganda.

The so called “art” of Ms. Shvarts is not an isolated example.  It is, in fact today’s norm. Sacred images of Jesus and Mary immersed in body fluids, distorted human corpses in formaldehyde, “performance art” involving Vaseline and chocolate spread on the bodies of live actors engaged in obscene acts, are commonplace in the annals of contemporary art. Perversity, revolution, and the Culture of Death, are what the avant-garde is all about. In rational terms it is a debased view of the nature of human freedom given over to psycho-pathology.

In 1989, Franklin W. Robinson, former director of the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, stated the case clearly by saying that the whole purpose of modern art is to foment a radical shift in our moral values: "It demands that we rethink our assumptions about every issue in life, from religion to politics, from love to sex, to death, and the afterlife."  Ms. Shvarts is but a dutiful disciple of this modern moral dogma.

The purveyors of present day painting and sculpture and even architecture have purposefully eschewed beauty as the legitimate end of art. They have an agenda.  Art has become, simply said, an ideologically tool. Ecologists, feminists, homosexuals, along with other special interest groups allied with self-empowered miscreants and malcontents, assault our imagination, not only in art galleries and in the public square, but also on television, and even via the illustrations of our children’s textbooks supplied to virtually all our public schools.

We are in the midst of a very real culture war, in which the imagination plays a crucial, if not decisive, role.

The Church, and all men and women of good will, must become not only outraged, but engaged in this battle and not be hood-winked by our bright but perverse adversaries in the so called “art establishment.” While we must strongly denounce the machinations of those who wish to tear down our Christian civilization by word and image, we must, on the other hand, support genuine Catholic art and artists that promote the Culture of Life, salvation, and the beauty of God’s creation.

Signed: Hamilton Reed Armstrong, U I S

Mr. Armstrong was born in 1937 and studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with internationally recognized sculptors: Carl Iluva, Walker Hancock, and Fredrick Shrady.

Much of Mr. Armstrong's work was produced during an extended stay in Spain, where his work was extolled by noted critics Raul Chavari, and Cecilio Barbaran as a revitalization of the Spanish mystical tradition embodied in the work of El Greco, Zurbaran, Alonso Cano, Pedro de Mena and Martinez Montañez.  Mr. Armstrong's work is also reproduced in the UNESCO Encyclopedia of World History (Edicion Planeta 1977, Vol. II).

Mr. Armstrong has taught art history for Christendom College, Front Royal, VA; studio art for the Magi Center at The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC; and presently teaches with The Height's School, Potomac, MD, as well as the distance learning program of the International Catholic University, Notre Dame, IN.

Mr. Armstrong's work may be seen in private collections, churches, public spaces in the United States, Europe, and Africa as well as many museums including the Dansforth in Framingham MA. Recent commissions include: the commemorative medal for the Victims of Communism Committee, Washington D.C.; a portrait bust of H.H. Pius X for the papal memorial chapel, Riese Italy; a portrait bust of H.H. John Paul II for The John Paul II Cultural Center, Washington D.C.; the Papanicolas memorial Chalice for St. Sophia's Greek Orthodox Church, Washington D.C.; and he is presently working on a series of monumental sculptures for the Ave Maria School of Law, Ann Arbor, MI.

Provided in collaboration with the Foundation for Sacred Arts.

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