Issandrea F.

Molano

Performance Art

Definition of Performance Art

 Is a performance presented to an audience within a fine art context, traditionally
interdisciplinary.
 Can happen anywhere, in any type of venue or setting and for any length of time. The actions of
an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work.
 can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body or
presence in a medium, and a relationship between performer and audience
 a time-based art form that typically features a live presentation to an audience or to onlookers
 It is an Artworks that are created through actions performed by the artist or other participants,
which may be live or recorded, spontaneous or scripted

HISTORY OF PERFORMANCE ART

Performance art arose in the early 1970s as a general term for a multitude of activities—including
Happenings, body art, actions, events, and guerrilla theatre. It can embrace a wide diversity of styles. In
the 1970s and ’80s, performance art ranged from Laurie Anderson’s elaborate media spectacles to
Carolee Schneeman’s body ritual and from the camp glamour of the collective known as General Idea to
Joseph Beuys’s illustrated lectures. In the 1990s it ranged from Ron Athey’s AIDS activism to Orlan’s use
of cosmetic surgery on her own body. And in the early 21st century, Marina Abramović rekindled a great
interest in the medium through her re-creation of historical pieces.

Performance art has its origins in the early 20th century, and it is closely identified with the progress of
the avant-garde, beginning with Futurism. The Futurists’ attempt to revolutionize culture included
performative evenings of poetry, music played on newly invented instruments, and a form of drastically
distilled dramatic presentation. Such elements of Futurist events as simultaneity and noise-music were
subsequently refined by artists of the Dada movement, which made great use of live art. Both Futurists
and Dadaists worked to confound the barrier between actor and performer, and both capitalized on the
publicity value of shock and outrage. An early theorist and practitioner in avant-garde theatre was the
German artist Oskar Schlemmer, who taught at the Bauhaus from 1920 to 1929 and is perhaps best
known for Das triadische Ballet (1916–22; “The Triadic Ballet”), which called for complex movements
and elaborate costumes. Schlemmer presented his ideas in essays in a collective publication, Die Bühne
im Bauhaus (1924; The Theater of the Bauhaus), edited by Walter Gropius.
 First International Dada Fair, Berlin, 1920.
Courtesy of Hannah Hoch

Subsequent important developments in performance art occurred

in the United States after World War II. In 1952, at Black
Mountain College (1933–57) in North Carolina, the experimental
composer John Cage organized an event that included
performances by the choreographer and dancer Merce
Cunningham, the poet Charles Olson, and the artist Robert
Rauschenberg, among others. In its denial of traditional
disciplinary boundaries, this influential event set a pattern for
Happenings and Fluxus activities and provided an impetus for much of the live art of the following
decade. In the 1960s and ’70s, performance art was characterized by improvisation, spontaneity,
audience interaction, and political agitation. It also became a favourite strategy of feminist artists—such
as the gorilla-masked Guerrilla Girls, whose mission was to expose sexism, racism, and corruption mainly
in the art world—as well as of artists elsewhere in the world, such as the Chinese artist Zhang Huan.
Popular manifestations of the genre can be seen in Blue Man Group and such events as the Burning Man
festival, held annually in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada.

Artworks and Artists of Performance Art

Yves Klein: The Anthropometries of the Blue Period (1958)
The Anthropometries of the Blue Period (1958)

Artist: Yves Klein

Although painting sat at the center of Yves Klein's practice,

his approach to it was highly unconventional, and some
critics have seen him as the paradigmatic neo-avant-garde
artist of the post-war years. He initially became famous for
monochromes - in particular for monochromes made with
an intense shade of blue that Klein eventually patented.
But he was also interested in Conceptual art and
performance. For the Anthropometries, he painted
actresses in blue paint and had them slather about on the
floor to create body-shaped forms. In some cases, Klein
made finished paintings from these actions; at other times
he simply performed the stunt in front of finely dressed
gallery audiences, and often with the accompaniment of
chamber music. By removing all barriers between the
human and the painting, Klein said, "[the models] became
living brushes...at my direction the flesh itself applied the
color to the surface and with perfect exactness." It has been suggested that the pictures were inspired
by marks left on the ground in Hiroshima and Nagasaki following the atomic explosions in 1945.
Performed at Robert Godet's, Paris 1958 and at Galerie Internationale d'Art Contemporain, Paris 1960
Yoko Ono: Cut Piece (1964)
Cut Piece (1964)

Artist: Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece, first performed in 1964, was a direct

invitation to an audience to participate in an unveiling of the female
body much as artists had been doing throughout history. By
creating this piece as a live experience, Ono hoped to erase the
neutrality and anonymity typically associated with society’s
objectification of women in art. For the work, Ono sat silent upon a
stage as viewers walked up to her and cut away her clothing with a
pair of scissors. This forced people to take responsibility for their
voyeurism and to reflect upon how even passive witnessing could
potentially harm the subject of perception. It was not only a strong
feminist statement about the dangers of objectification, but
became an opportunity for both artist and audience members to fill
roles as both creator and artwork.
Performed at Yamaichi Concert Hall, Kyoto, Japan 1964

Chris Burden: Shoot (1971)

Shoot (1971)
Artist: Chris Burden

In many of his early 1970s performance pieces, Burden put himself in danger, thus placing the viewer in
a difficult position, caught between a humanitarian instinct to intervene and the taboo against touching
and interacting with art pieces. To perform Shoot, Burden stood in front of a wall while one friend shot
him in the arm with a .22 long rifle, and another friend documented the event with a camera. It was
performed in front of a small, private audience. One of Burden's most notorious and violent
performances, it touches on the idea of martyrdom, and the notion that the artist may play a role in
society as a kind of scapegoat. It might also speak to issues of gun control and, in the context of the
period, the Vietnam War.
Performed at F Space, Santa Ana, California

Vito Acconci: Seedbed (1972)

Seedbed (1972)

Artist: Vito Acconci

In Seedbed, 1972 Vito Acconci laid underneath a custom made ramp that extended from two feet up
one wall of the Sonnabend Gallery and sloped down to the middle of the floor. For eight hours a day
during the course of the exhibition, Acconci laid underneath the ramp masturbating as guest’s walked
above his hidden niche. As he performed this illicit act he would utter fantasies and obscenities toward
the gallery guests into a microphone, which became audibly piped out through the room for all to hear.

The piece placed Acconci in a position that was both public and private. It also created a provocative
intimacy between artist and audience that produced multiple levels of feeling. Participants were prone
to shock, discomfort, or perhaps even arousal. By positioning himself in two roles, both as giver and
receiver of pleasure, Acconci furthered body art’s dictum of artist and artwork merging as one. He also
used his sperm as a medium within the piece.
Performed at Sonnabend Gallery in New York City 1972
Marina Abramović: Rhythm 10 (1973)
Rhythm 10 (1973)

Artist: Marina Abramović

In Rhythm 10, Abramović uses a series of 20 knives to quickly stab at the spaces between her
outstretched fingers. Every time she pierces her skin, she selects another knife from those carefully laid
out in front of her. Halfway through, she begins playing a recording of the first half of the hour-long
performance, using the rhythmic beat of the knives striking the floor, and her hand, to repeat the same
movements, cutting herself at the same time. This piece exemplifies Abramović's use of ritual in her
work, and demonstrates what the artist describes as the synchronicity between the mistakes of the past
and those of the present.
Performed at a festival in Edinburgh