Performance Art
Performance art makes the live act itself the artwork. Instead of a painting or sculpture, the medium is the artist's body, actions and time spent before an audience - sometimes shocking, sometimes silent, never repeatable. The form grew from Futurist and Dada provocations and from John Cage's teaching at Black Mountain College, but it took shape in the late 1950s and 1960s through Allan Kaprow's happenings, the Japanese Gutai group, Fluxus events and Viennese Actionism. In the 1970s it became the chosen vehicle of body art, feminism and endurance tests, with artists using risk, duration and discomfort to probe identity, violence and the limits of spectatorship. Because the work exists only while it happens, documentation - photographs, film, video, written scores - becomes the surviving trace. Marina Abramović's marathon museum performances later brought the form to the widest public it has ever had.
Defining characteristics
- The live action, not a physical object, is the artwork
- The artist's own body as medium and often as subject
- Time-based: duration, endurance and liveness are part of the form
- Direct audience presence - spectators witness, react, or are implicated
- Risk and provocation: discomfort, danger, nudity, taboo
- Documentation - photo, film, video, score - as the work's surviving trace
Key figures
- Marina Abramović (b. 1946) — Long-duration solo and duo performances that brought performance art to museum audiences
- Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) — Shamanistic actions and 'social sculpture' that expanded what art could be
- Allan Kaprow (1927-2006) — Invented the Happening, blurring art and everyday life
- Yoko Ono (b. 1933) — Fluxus instruction pieces and confrontational performance (Cut Piece)
- Carolee Schneemann (1939-2019) — Pioneer of feminist body art (Interior Scroll)
Example works
- Cut Piece — Yoko Ono (1964)
- Shoot — Chris Burden (1971)
- The Artist Is Present — Marina Abramović (2010)
Sources
- Performance Art - WikiArt institution
- Performance art - Wikipedia encyclopedia