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Tracing Foundations The roots of Performance Art can be traced back to Romanticism, when artists and poets wanted to express their inner feelings in relation to nature, inspiring a subjective interpretation of the world around him. Awe, terror, mortality, transformative, self, religious and terror are just a few words that describe Romanticism. Romanticism is described as something that causes feelings that both repels and attracts and this mirrors that of our responses to the abject body in Performance Art. Art movements such as Dada, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism have all influenced or used the artist’s ‘body’ as material. Ira Licht refers to “Marcel Duchamp’s influence is seminal. It is his career that certified the possibility that the artist himself has an aesthetic reality” (Warr and Jones, 2000, p.251/252). Duchamp’s introduction of the ‘real’ in his ready-mades redefined the art ‘object’. Licht goes on to say “of special pertinence to the brief history of body art are his celebrated impersonations of Rrose Selavy, his female alter ego” and describes yet another performance piece of Duchamp’s “with his head shaved in the form of a star, Duchamp… with painted face and a wooden spoon in his lapel, himself became the art object” (ibid). Later in the 1950’s the artist Jackson Pollock’s painting placed himself within his work. “So in Jackson Pollock’s dramatic confrontation with the canvas – ‘an arena in which to act’ – the creative moment is more important than the actual work of art” (Meecham and Sheldon, 2000, p.169) further develops the idea of the artist as both subject and object. Kaprow states “Pollock could truthfully say that he was ‘in’ his work” and goes on to say “but it is perhaps bordering on ritual itself, which happens to use paint as one of its materials” (Warr and Jones, 2000, p.194). By 1960 Yves Klein had taken painting a stage further by directing two female nudes covered in blue paint to act as the paint brush on paper. “They became living brushes” (Kaprow quoted in Warr and Jones, 2000, p.196). Though Klein as artist had distanced himself from the actuality of painting, the body and the element of performance was united as one.
Happenings and Fluxus performance combined artist’s performance in public places outside of the gallery space. “Fluxus performances situate the body in the centre of knowledge as the principle means by which to interrogate the very conditions in which individuals interact with things and thereby produce social meanings” (Stiles quoted in Warr and Jones, 2000, p.211). The artist’s body became ever more pivotal in these radical often chaotic events. The increasingly important role of the body in Body/Performance Art became a reaction against the commodification of the work of art in the Capitalist West able to express social/political issues of the day. These events which took place in real time and real space and could only be witnessed by a live audience. These happenings lived in the memory of those that witnessed them, the only documentary evidence being photographic, and in the early 1960’s this was often sketchy. By the late 1960’s the artist’s body became a catalyst for representing issues of gender, race and sex. Women artists used their bodies to confront the masculine hierarchy of the art world. Marina Abramovic used physical endurance to push her body to the limit, even on occasion, putting her life at risk, and being rescued only when members of the public intervened and stopped the performance. For example, Abramovic (1998) speaking about Rhythm 5 (1974) constructed a five point star on the ground made from petrol soaked wood shavings leaving a small area in the centre clear. She set the star alight, cutting her hair and nails she threw these into the points of the star and lay down in the centre, unaware that the fire had consumed all of the oxygen, she lost consciousness. It was only when flames were physically touching her legs and she did not react that two spectators entered the star and carried her out. Bringing “the performer and the public into another dimension of reality” (Abramovic, 2003). It is at this point that the abject body in performance surfaces with other artists such as Gina Pane and Chris Burden.
The abject body of the 1960’s has been replaced by the predominantly male abject body in the 2000’s by artists such as Ron Athey and Franko B. It is Franko B’s work that will be the subject for this investigation into the abject. next >> |
Introduction |
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Copyright © Franko B 2007
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