There are many noteworthy bits of art. There are many silly ones. There are not a few that attempt to be so avant-garde that they are unintentionally pathetic.

So is the case of one Marni Kotak who decided to give birth inside an art gallery. The article offers that this was the artist wife’s and artist husband’s first child. This means that they have managed to perform the defining natural function of life, reproduction, for the first time ever! Congratulations!

But on the other hand, there seems to be a lot of reproduction going on all around. What, a great many humans are born every day. Often, the family is or can be present at the event of this minor miracle. Human births must have been witnessed about as many times as pianists have rehearsed scales for warm-up. One might opine that births are … rather common, actually.

That is, in the normal parts of society, the parts that create life and build families. There, reproductive biology is not some sort of abstract platonic archetype that we may only hope to reach by paying to see “artists” doing things naked. It just is. Never mind what kind of person would put herself on display; what kind of people would pay to see it as “art”? Maybe they just live smaller, simpler lives than the rest of us.