At first glance, you may wonder what makes this image so gross, or why I would qualify it as some sort of creepy/weird piece of modern art. I suggest you simply read the description to find out why.

Enjoy

mmmm... menstrual fluids...

All I have to say about this is WTF????

The use of body fluids is actually quite old in art... it's a known fact that Leonardo da Vinci mixed his oils with pee (most of the Renaissance painters did the same)... Marcel Duchamp painted an abstraction using semen (it's not really one of his most known pieces, but he did it)... Marc Quinn did a very interesting sculpture of his head using his own blood to fill the mould... the Viennese Actionism movement was mostly about working with body fluids... Piero Manzoni canned his own sh*t (in his famous "Artist's Sh*t")... the list of etceteras would be endless.

The only problem I find with that painting is that this woman didn't actually do something interesting with her menstrual blood... the picture itself is not really special, but mostly silly. I don't see a problem with using menstrual blood, it's just that she didn't do something really interesting with it.

If this painting shocks you, then I don't see why aren't you shocked when you see a typical renaissance painting... most of them are painted using pee among other things.

I am hoping against hope that this thread doesn't become another interminable discussion about what is and isn't art.

shocked? No. Disgusted? Yes.

Ohh, and putting your pee in paint isn't quite the same as, say, painting with your pee (yes I know that wouldn't work anyway, but I'm making an analogy here). As gross as putting urine in paint might be, it doesn't hold a candle to making an entire paining with nothing but menses.

If you think poo, pee and menses should be used to make art, more power to you. I for one don't subscribe to the school of modern art, in that sense.

I can entirely accept that something can be gross, nasty, disgusting, and still be art.

I'm not fond of this work, as it seems a little pretentious, but if this is how the artist wants to express themselves, and it doesn't hurt anyone, I don't have a problem with it.

More importantly, how in the world would someone come up with the idea to use menstrual fluid as paint?

The use of pee, semen, poo, menstrual blood, normal blood, saliva, etc was actually very typical during the renaissance, when artists started to experiment about how to create new textures, new ways of painting and the use of the body was no longer a taboo... and alchemy and making colors were mostly one and the same thing (specially after Marsilio Ficino showed up).

So it's not really "modern"... it's quite old.
When you visit your favorite museum of classical art, the walls are covered with pee, semen, poo, menstrual blood, normal blood, saliva, etc... the fact that you don't see it doesn't mean that it's not there.

There is a big lie about Modern lie, which is a lie that most people believes: that it's tearing apart a classical tradition. Actually it isn't... and it is a part of that classical tradition that it seems to be tearing apart. There is nothing "new" about painting with menstrual blood...

if it makes a mark on canvas, paper, or another flat surface, someone has considered painting with it.

I'm just wondering how that discussion went.

"Honey, could you paint me a picture of mega man with your menses?"

I can only assume that a) this was something she has done before (that is paint with her menses) and he simply made a request and b) these are both art school kids.

.... maybe because it's one of the earliest pigments that humans have used to paint and it's even possible to find menstrual blood in some of the oldest works of art known where there are pigments (very often used in sacred religious works of art related to fertility... which is not a big surprise, of course).

People has been painting with it for thousands and thousands of years... I don't get why you all seem to believe that it's "new"

Absolutely disgusting.

Strange.

Makes you wonder what kind of person requests that sort of thing.

Doesn't it smell?

That doesn't make it normal. I've not heard of many artists in the today that utilize such materials.

Acting as though someone's reluctance to accept such a technique is unfounded and odd is just ridiculous. We get it, people used such materials quite a bit a few hundred years ago; but today, it's not so common. I for one don't recall encountering any sort of lesson in which I jacked off into my paint mixture to give it a different texture in my last art course.

Weirdos..the both of em.

It is a well-drawn picture disregarding the material used.

Pure, pure, pure, PURE squick moment right there.

Why?



Gruesome.

Slightly disturbing.

Probably that's because your teacher was following modern art techniques qere the artist in most cases isn't in charge of creating his own pigments and buys them in tubes from a factory.

Also, she should have painted a Nietzsche-Freud-Marx tryptich with menstrual blood. It would have been by far more interesting than this cartoon character.

Truth.
Mega Manstruation seems kinda stupid.

I'm just disgusted that someone took the time to draw megaman.

Exactly. The point is, those are modern techniques that are used by everyone. It's totally abnormal for someone to use menstrual fluids to paint a picture in this day and age, because one can obtain a pigment or texture from several other manufactured substances. There may be some sort of personal artistic value that changes with its use in some artists, but the basic point remains valid; that is, that this is not very normal at all today, and while it may have been employed more readily in the past, such is certainly not true today.

I find it odd that people are missing the point here. This is some pretty mediocre art which is being discussed for not real reason. Just because it is drawn using a wierd substance does not make it good art or worthy of discussion.

Pretty much this.

This is by far one of the least strange uses I've heard for things relating to menstruation.

Killing someone with a placenta, now that's strange.