Performance art

Performance art is an artwork that involves an artist's live actions in front of an audience. Performance art has few rules and, since its inception, has often defied the rules of conventional art forms. Performance artists often believe that traditional art forms do not satisfy their need for creation, so they engage in new modes of expression. Because performance art has no ties to the past or to tradition, artists can express themselves however they please. The "golden era" of performance art occurred during the 1960s, but the art form continues today. Many modern performance artists perform extreme acts intended to shock audiences or call attention to particular causes.

Brief History

Although many identify the 1960s as the beginning of performance art, the art form actually dates back much further. The earliest influences on performance art are poets, bards, and court jesters of medieval times. Renaissance-era spectacles and masquerades further influenced the development of performance art. During the sixteenth century, colonies along the Iberian Peninsula had poets present their work in a unique way. Poets drew each stanza of their work and posted them in public places. Then they sang their poetry to anyone who passed. These performances combined visual art, music, and the written word. In the nineteenth century, poets sometimes visited cemeteries to recite their poems to corpses. These actions, too, were early forms of performance art.

Modern performance art can trace its roots to art movements such as futurism, Dadaism, and surrealist automatism. Prior to displaying their paintings, Italian futurists staged a number of nighttime performances during which they read their manifestos. The Dada movement found its origins at a cabaret in Switzerland. These live events had elements of political rallies and vaudeville. Other avant-garde movements, including nouveau realisme, Fluxus, neo-Dada, body art, and feminist art, also affected performance art. All of these movements rejected the traditions and confines of earlier art forms. They were not necessarily interested in finished works, but in conveying messages or ideas.

After World War II, performance art, which had found some success in Europe, began to appear in the United States. In the 1960s, performances known as Happenings (inspired by the Fluxus movement) became popular. Happenings, which took place in alternative locales in New York and in European capitals, were multidisciplinary events. Audience participation was expected, and the line between reality and art was blurred. Although aspects of the performances had some elements of planning, an improvisational attitude abounded, and the performances had a fleeting nature.

Performance art continued to build from there. The upheaval in the political, social, and cultural realms of the 1960s had a significant influence on the performance art movement. Many performance artists were uncomfortable with the relationship between art and broader socioeconomic and political processes. Performance artists drew material from the war in Vietnam, and their work often took on a protest element. Other movements came into existence or regained prominence during this period, including feminism. Female performance artists used their art to confront injustices and release their frustrations. Women's sexuality was a common topic of performance art. Women spoke out in new ways on topics that had never been addressed in the past. Since the 1960s, a large percentage of performance artists have been women. Women's roles in the movement likely developed because of its coinciding rise with feminism. Performance art's newness meant women did not have to break into an already male-dominated area. Early female performance artists included Carolee Schneemann, Yoko Ono, and the late Hannah Wilke.

By the 1970s, performance art had grown tremendously. New forms and types of performance art arose. Many performances were based in activism. Performance artists strived to draw attention to issues through their work. An artist's body became a regular part of his or her work. The intention was to question the conventions of sexuality. Artists used their bodies to convey themes such as endurance, self-control, and transformation. Body art and living sculpture arose as separate but related versions of performance art. In the 1980s, performance artists found ways to involve media and technology in their work. Performance artists were able to reach a larger audience through mediums such as film.

By the 1990s, performance art had found its way into museums and art galleries. While some of the characteristics of performance art can present challenges, museums have found creative ways to exhibit these works. Early works have been restaged, new work has been presented, and live performances have been acquired and integrated into collections.

Overview

Although performance art generally does not abide by any specific rules, it does have some key components. For example, performance artists generally perform in front of a live audience. Performance artists aim to engage their audiences and challenge their thinking. The relationship and interaction between artist and audience is part of the artwork. The audience shares the space and time with the performing artist. Unlike the theater, where performers have a stage that separates them from the audience, performance art has no barriers. Both the performer and the audience are in a relationship with the art.

Time and space are key components of performance art. Performance art may include a solo artist or an artist performing with collaborators in a defined time frame and specific space. The artist's body is a primary medium, and it enables the performance to be shared. The performing artist may wear a costume, making his or her dress a part of the performance. Performance art can deploy other artistic disciplines, such as music, dance, literature, poetry, film, design, fashion, or architecture. Performance artists typically employ multiple disciplines, and in truth, the options are endless.

Performance art may be delivered via recitation or improvisation, which are associated with theater, but it seldom utilizes a plot structure. Performance art may be impulsive, durational, improvised, or practiced and performed with or without scripts. Some performances occur just once. Performances may range in size from intimate gatherings to mass spectacles. Performance art may take place in formal settings, such as art museums and galleries, informal settings such as bars and cafés, or even on the street (where passersby become, sometimes unknowingly, part of the performance and its meaning). Machines, robots, and other technological components have been utilized in performance art. The artist is performer, creator, and director of the performance.

Topic Today

The 1960s, when performance art entered the mainstream, are considered the genre's golden era. As the golden era fades into history, some have begun to question whether performance is still relevant today.

One challenge to keeping performance art relevant today is an artist's ability to shock the audience. Such surprises are employed to make the audience take notice, rethink commonly held notions, and reconsider past beliefs. In modern times, when everything is available online and YouTube has videos on any topic that one can imagine, shocking, or even slightly surprising, audiences is nearly impossible. Genres blend into one another, and originality is harder to find. Despite the overload of outrageous material available to everyone with the click of a button, performance artists continue to create original performances, and performance art continues to draw audiences.

Marina Abramović, a Yugoslavian-born performance artist, began performing in 1973, and has named herself the "grandmother of performance art." One of Abramović's early famous performances occurred in 1974 in a Serbian gallery. Members of the public were invited to take one of the seventy-two items Abramović had placed on a table and use it on her however they chose. Items included olive oil, roses, and a loaded gun. The performance lasted six hours, and Abramović walked away bloodied and in tears. She felt lucky to walk away alive.

In 2010, Abramović performed The Artist Is Present. For three months, Abramović spent eight hours a day at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, sitting in a chair at a table. Museum visitors sat, one at a time, in a chair opposite her and expressed their emotions, laughing, crying, and so on. Abramović was impassive—neither speaking nor moving—the entire time. Despite the uncertainty Abramović and the MoMA felt before the performance, it proved to be a huge success. Abramović stated that the goal of the performance was to connect with the person who sat across from her. She strived to give unconditional love to everyone who sat there. Many of the strangers reciprocated kind feelings, unlike the 1974 performance that drew bad energy from strangers.

Due to the massive popularity of Abramović's performance at MoMA, performance art has become more mainstream. Artists such as Lady Gaga, James Franco, and Jay-Z have labeled their work performance art. Some critics and practitioners of performance art have their doubts about such claims, explaining that a difference exists between performing and performance art. Others believe that the term performance art is becoming abused, blaming the media for using the phrase to describe any art that is unusual or over the top. They believe that performance art is not clearly planned, as the artist does not know his or her destination until he or she reaches it. Yet, artists like Abramović have restaged performances with the goal of retaining the memory of past influential performers and works. The challenge in determining what constitutes performance art stems from the genre's lack of one true definition. Since performance art is open to interpretation, debates over what is and is not performance art continue to arise.

Performance art continues to push the envelope and shock its audiences, too, as some performances include startling acts of self-mutilation. For example, during Self-Obliteration, performance artist Ron Athey sat in a glass box wearing only a long blonde wig. The wig covered needles that were against Athey's scalp. When Athey brushed the wig, blood sprayed from his scalp onto the walls of the glass box. Athey used the performance to promote HIV awareness. Performance artist Waafa Bilal called his work And Counting. Bilal, an Iraqi American, lost a brother during the war in Iraq. To draw attention to the lives lost during the war, Bilal had his back tattooed 105,000 times to represent the 100,000 Iraqi casualties and the 5,000 American soldiers who lost lives. The performance took place over a twenty-four-hour period. The names of the deceased were read aloud during the performance.

Some have questioned whether self-mutilation can truly be considered art. Abramović, for one, has a method behind her acts of self-mutilation. She believes people are very afraid of pain and dying. She rids herself of these fears by staging and going through pain in a public forum. Believing that these performances show her audience that it is possible to deal with these fears and turn them into something else, Abramović stands by the credo that art is a matter of life and death.

While self-mutilation performance art may draw headlines, plenty of performance art does not involve such acts. Marni Kotak's The Birth of Baby X had her giving birth in a birthing center she built in front of an audience. For two weeks, Abraham Poincheval slept inside a dead bear's hollowed out stomach. Rachel Mason reenacted Senator Rand Paul's thirteen-hour filibuster dressed as a character she calls FutureClown.

Performance art has evolved with the times, and it continues to change to stay relevant. Performance art's diversity and practitioners, who are willing to go to extreme lengths, ensure its relevance. While critics and audiences alike debate its merits, performance art seems likely to persist into the future.

Bibliography

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