Introduction
This article seek to inform my readers about the topic Performance Art in general. Its historic background and views from various scholars about the topic in question. When you think of performance, what comes to mind? Are we talking about a sound stage with your favorite performer, a dance club or a school production? Performance is simply defined as an event that involves a group of people, but this is not always the case as to a live performance, in front of an audience of thousands of individuals. A performance can be personal and intimate or social and culturally influenced. It is very important for one to understand that the term performance art is not performing art. The term Performance Art should not be confused with the more general term Performing arts. Performing arts are art forms in which artists use their voices and or the movements of their bodies, often in relation to other objects, to convey artistic expression as opposed to, for example, purely visual arts, in which artists use paint or canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Performing art can therefore be simply referred to as type of arts that are performed in front of an audience, such as plays, music, and dance. On the other hand, performance art as defined in the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary is an art that consists only of a person or group of persons performing something and that does not exist apart from when it is being performed. By definition, performance art seeks to be innovative rather than commercial, and is therefore not what we typically see in a normal theatrical performance which seek to represent real life situations on stage. This type of art is mostly abstract and always beats the imaginations of the audience.
Marvin Carlson, an author and a theater expert, says that practitioners of performance art “do not base their work upon characters previously created by other artists, but upon their own bodies, their own autobiographies, their own specific experiences in a culture or in the world, made performative by their consciousness of them and the process of displaying them for audiences.” With Marvin’s definition, it clearly represents a considerable shift toward the performers of the performing art in terms of their responsibility for interpretation and expression of the art work. It also indicates a self-consciousness in the act of performance. In the art work of a performance art, no attempt is made to disguise the fact that it is a performance, and the identities of the performers are consciously and deliberately brought to bear upon it.
Performance artists often challenge the audience to think in new and unconventional ways, break conventions of traditional arts, and break down conventional ideas about what art really is. As long as the performer does not become a player who repeats a role, performance art can include satirical elements, utilize robots and machines as performers or even borrow elements of any performing arts such as dance, music, and circus.
Performance is a genre in which art is presented live, usually by the artist but sometimes with collaborators or performers.
How It Began
The term Performance Art got its start somewhere between the late 1950’s and 1970s in the United States. Originally the term was used to describe any live artistic event that included poets, film makers, dancers, musicians among others in addition to visual artists. This type of art emerged out of happenings and installations.
In the late 1950s, performance art in Europe began to develop alongside the work being done in the United States. Still affected by the fallout from World War II, many European artists were frustrated by the apolitical nature of Abstract Expressionism, the prevalent movement of the time. They looked for new ideas and styles of art that were bold and challenging than the traditional art forms. Fluxus provided one important focus for performance art in Europe that attracted artists such as Joseph Beuys.
Other manifestations included the work of the Viennese Actionists, which characterized the movement as not only a form of art, but also an existential attitude. The Actionists' work borrowed some ideas from American action painting which they transformed them into a highly ritualistic theatre that sought to challenge the perceived historical amnesia and return to normalcy in a country that had so recently been an ally of Adolph Hitler. The Actionists also protested governmental surveillance and restrictions of movement and speech, and their extreme performances led to their arrest several times.
An artist in Britain, named Gustav Metzger developed an approach which was described as "Auto-Destructive art," in which objects were violently destroyed in public performances that reflected on the Cold War and the threat of nuclear destruction.
By the early 1960s, major European cities such as Amsterdam, Cologne, Dusseldorf and Paris were the sites of ambitious performance gatherings.
Recent performance art has its roots in early avant-gardes such as Futurism, Dada and Surrealism. Before the Italian Futurists ever exhibited any of their paintings they held a number of evening performances during which they read their manifestoes. And similarly, the Dada movement was ushered into existence by a series of events at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. These movements often orchestrated events in theatres that borrowed from the styles and conventions of vaudeville and political rallies. They generally did so in order to address themes that were current in the sphere of visual art.
American performance art in the 1960s and 1970s coincided with the rise of second-wave feminism. Women artists turned to performance as a new medium that encouraged the release of frustrations at social injustice and the ownership of discussion about women's sexuality. This permitted lust, rage, and self-expression in art by women by way of allowing them to speak and be heard and given attention to as never before. Women
performers took the opportunity to build performance art for themselves, rather than getting involved in the already established male dominated art forms. Their art forms mostly dealt with issues that had not yet been already initiated or picked upon as concept or theme by their male counterparts. An example is seen in Hannah Wilke’s work when she criticized Christianity's traditional suppression of women in Super-t-art (1974), by way of her depicting herself as a female Christ. During and since the beginning of the movement, women have made up a large percentage of performance artists.
Hannah Wilke depicting herself as a female Christ in her work Super-t-art (1974)
In the 1970s, after the success Performance art experienced, it seemed that this new and exciting movement would continue in popularity. However in the 1980s as performance art was being patronized and enjoyed in a large scale, paintings found its way back into the market stream which posed a major challenge to the performance art. Because the performance of a performing art was live and couldn’t be bought because the art work itself was the artist’s body, galleries and collectors wanted something material that could be physically bought and sold. As a result, Performance fell from favor, but it did not disappear entirely. During this period, an American performer, Laurie Anderson rose to considerable prominence in this period with dramatic stage shows that engaged new media and directly addressed the period's changing issues. Women performance artists were particularly unwilling to give up their newfound forms of expression, and continued to be prolific. In 1980, there was enough material to produce the exhibition A Decade of Women's Performance Art, at the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA. Organized by Mary Jane Jacob, Moira Roth and Lucy R. Lippard, the exhibition was a broad survey of works done in the United States during the 1970s, and included documentations of performances in photographs and texts. And in Eastern Europe throughout the 1980s, Performance art was frequently used to express social dissent.
Contributions of individuals to the Art
Chris Burden
Chris Burden was the first artist represented by Larry Gagosian, from 1978 until the present day. He shook the conventional art world and took the new art form to as yet unparalleled extremes. Images of this young artist continue to resonate today: having himself shot (shoot, 1971), locked up (Five Day Locker Piece, 1971), electrocuted, (Doorway to Heaven, 1973) cut (Through the Night Softly, 1973), crucified (Trans-fixed), and advertised on television (4 TV ads, 1937-1977)
In later years, Burden channeled the daring spirit these life-threatening performances into sculptures that embody technical feats on an imposing scale.
Chris Burden was born in 1946 in Boston, Massachusetts and died in Topanga, California in 2015.
“One of the motivations for doing performances, which is going to sound dumb is that when I got out of graduate school, I didn’t have any money. I really wanted to keep making art” recalls the artist at the Topanga Canyon compound where he works and lived with his wife.
His work is featured in major museum collections worldwide including LACMA and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Whitney Museum of Modern Art and Museum of Modern Art, New York; MCA Chicago; Tate Gallery, London and 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan.
“Limits is a relative term. Like beauty, it is often in the eyes of the beholder”-Chris Burden.
Burden stood in front of a wall while one friend shot him in the arm with a .22 long rifle,
Rhythm 10 1973
Marina Abramovic
Abramovic 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 Abramovic'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
Joseph Beuys
For three consecutive days in May, 1974, Beuys enclosed himself in a gallery with a wild coyote. Having previously announced that he would not enter the United States while the Vietnam War proceeded, this piece was his first and only action in America, and Beuys was ferried between the airport and the gallery in an ambulance to ensure that his feet did not have to touch American soil. Coyote centered on ideas of America wild and tamed. In an attempt to connect with an idea of wild, pre-colonial America, Beuys lived with a coyote for several days, attempting to communicate with it. He organized a sequence of interactions that would repeat for the duration of the piece, such as cloaking himself in felt and using a cane as a "lightening rod", and following the coyote around the room, bent at the waist and keeping the cane pointed at the coyote. Copies of The Wall Street Journal arrived daily, and were used as a toilet by the coyote, as if to say, "everything that claims to be a part of America is part of my territory." Performed at Rene Block Gallery, New York NY
Coyote: I Like America and America Likes Me,1974.
Carolee Schneemann
Carolee Schneemann, who defines herself as a multi-disciplinary artist, working across a variety of media, first made an impact in the context of feminist art. Interior Scroll is one of her most famous works. To stage it, she smeared her nude body with paint, mounted a table, and began adopting some of the typical poses that models strike for artists in life class. Then she proceeded to extract a long coil of paper from her vagina, and began to read the text written on it. It was once thought that the text derived from her response to a male filmmaker's critique of her films (some of her most notable films of the time included imagery of the Vietnam War, and documentation of a performance entitled Meat Joy, involving nude bodies writhing about in meat). The filmmaker had apparently commented on her penchant for "personal clutter. Persistence of feelings and primitive techniques" - in effect, qualities that were deemed "feminine". But Schneemann has since said that the text came from a letter sent to a female art critic who found her films hard to watch. By using her physical body as both a site of performance and as the source for a text, Schneemann refused the fetishization of the genitals. Performed in East Hampton, NY and at the Telluride Film Festival, Colorado.
Interior Scroll Carolee Schneemann 1975
In conclusion, Performance art gives artists and the performer to tell a story that the traditional art limits and beats the imagination of the audience. The future of performance art is as unimaginable as far as the creative imaginations of artists are concerned.