PERFORMANCE ART

A form of art that emerged in the 1960s, involving live performances by artists, often blurring
the boundaries between art and everyday life.
Art in which the medium is the artist’s own body, and the actions performed by the artist.
Art that could not be bought, sold, or traded as modality.
Characteristics

 Performance art is legitimate artistic movement.

 Performance art is live.
 Has no rules or guidelines (it is art because the artist says it is art. It is experimental).
 Performance art is not for sale.

Performance art may be comprised of painting, sculpture, dialogue, poetry, music, dance, film
footage, lase lights, animals, fire, etc.
Performance art may be entertaining, amusing, shocking, or be horrifying. It is meant to be
memorable.

ORIGINS
Cultural theorist often traced performance art activity back to the beginning of the 20 th century,
to the Russian constructivists, Futurists and Dada.
TYPES OF PERFORMANCE ARTIST
Constructivist art is committed to the complete abstraction with a devotion to modernity,
where themes are often geometric, experimental, and rarely emotional.
Dada provided a significant progenitor with the unconventional performances of poetry by the
likes of Richard Huelsenbeck and Tristan Tzara.
Futurist artists could be identified as precursors of performances, such as David Burliuk, who
painted his face for his actions.

1960’s
Happening is a new art form at the beginning o the 1960’s
A HAPPENING allows the artist to experiment with body motion, recorded sounds, written and
spoken texts, and even smells. Sometimes, the audience members even become performers.

Example of Happening
Happenings in the New York scene written in 1961 as the form was developed.
Other artists who created HAPPENING:

 JIM DINE
 CLAES OLDENBURG
 ROBERT WHITMAN
 WOLF VOSTELL
1968
The work of performance artists often showed influences of the cultural and political
events of that year.
1969
BARBARA T. SMIT with Ritual Meal was at forefront of the feminist body art.
1970’s
Artists whose wok already before tended to be a performance art, as well as new artists,
at the beginning of the 1970’s began to present performance art in a stricter form.
New artists with radical piece shoot, in performances where Chris Burden, with the 1971
performance which he was shot in his left arm by an assistant from about five meters, and Vito
Acconci in the same year with Seedbed.
1980’s

By the end of 1980’s, performance art had become so widely known; mass culture had come to
supply both structure and subject matter for much performance art; and several performance artist, had
indeed become crossover artists in mainstream entertainment.

Among the performance art most discussed in the art-world of this decade were a performance
by Linda Montano and Tehching Hsieh between July 1983 and July 1984, Art/Life; One year
Performance (Rope Piece), ad Karen Finley’s I’m an Ass Man (1987).

Hedwig Gorski before 1982 came up with the term performance poetry, a kind of text-based
vocal performance. Performance poets relied more on the rhetorical and philosophical expression in
their poetics than performance artists, who arose from the visual art genres of painting and sculpture.

1990’s

In the 1990’s, performance art as a complete artform gained admittance into art museums.
2000’s

From March 14 to May 31, 2010, the Museum of Modern Art held a major retrospective and
performance recreation of Marina Abramovic’s world, the biggest exhibition of performance art in
MoMA’s history.