The History of Performance Art - Essay Example

'The history of Performance art in the twentieth century is the history of a permissive, open-ended medium with endless variable, executed by artistsimpatient with the limitations of more established art forms, and determined to take their art directly to the public. For this reason its base has always been anarchic' (Roselee Goldberg, 2001). Performance art in the 20th century represents a mixture of liberal arts fields - different philosophies, different cultures interpreted in modern viewpoints, reflecting fashion, social and pop trends. Modern performance art dwells on current political topics and tries to illustrate them employment various techniques. In this essay I will attempt to focus my attention primarily of the visual arts and how they passed through an evolutional process in the 20th century. Although I partially agree with the statement that Goldberg (2001) makes that performance art is a medium with endless variables, almost no barrier, crossing all known taboos, and eventually borders with anarchism, I will try to pose the contra-argument that those alternations are caused by the fast-revolving global cultural, political and social life and consequently is a process which barely faces intentional directions. The term "performance art" was first used in the 1960's in the United States. Originally, the term referred to any live artistic event which engaged musicians, poets, film makers and so on (Goldberg, 2001). However, there were earlier forms of visual arts, for example the live performances of the Dadaists which was a combination of poetry and visual arts. Another example that Goldberg (2001) cites are the German Bauhaus, who established a theater workshop in order to examine the bonds between sound, space and light. Although, there were various other art performances the term hadn't been coined until the 1960s. By the 1970's the performance art idea spread as a worldwide acknowledged word which with the time began to be treated as a commodity - traded, advertised and sold (Goldberg, 2001). Consequently, the performance artists instilled in their art the direct contact with their audience through the public forum. This evolution of the performance art, eliminated the requirement to for galleries, agents and brokers to act as mediators between the artists and their audience. On one hand, this opened the art to the general public and aided the artists to maintain a more real contact with their admirers, on the other this process destroyed all aspects of the capitalism and gaining profits from the artists. The main characteristics of the performance art are that: It is in live; There are no specific rules or guidelines, the art is experimental and if the artist says it is art, then it is; It is not for sale, though there might be admission tickets or included film right; It may contain painting or sculpture, music, dance, opera, film footage, poetry, dialogue, live animals, fire and everything that crosses one's mind; It is a legitimate artistic movement and there are many institutions where it is taught as a degree course; It is amusing, shocking, terrifying, entertaining and memorable. The most memorable and affirmative definition that I found about visual art is, is given by Goodman (1982). The comments: "What we know through art is felt in our bones and nerves and muscles as well as grasped by our minds . . . all the sensitivity and responsiveness of the organism participates in the invention and interpretation of symbols (pp.198 - 199)." That is true about performance art is that it is influential, because it reaches everyone, because they can perceive it with their senses and react to the feelings that the art evokes in them. Goodman (1982) a philosopher most of all, notably remarks that visual art is riddled with "philosophic faults and aesthetic absurdities (p. 191)." We can refer the aesthetic absurdities to the quote that Goldberg (2001) stating that art in the 20th century resembles anarchy. If analyzed from a artistic point of view anarchy means performances combined in such a way that break all known classifications. In this sense we can call performance art and visual art in the 20th century an anarchy which is artistically blended with aesthetic irrationality. An example of the above argument is Laurie Anderson. In her book Goldberg (2000) describes Anderson's performance as visually startling, featuring an ingenious amalgam of text and sound. Moreover, Anderson paved the way of performances which piece together political commentary and intellectual endeavours. Not only that, but also Anderson utilized media into reaching out to the public and to the audience. Providing an example of Anderson for an outstanding performer with manifold talents, Goldberg (2000) also tacitly supports the thesis that visual art in the 20th century meets no limitations, exploits open mediums for distributing its messages to the people and creates more incongruous art forms. The most remarkable fact about Anderson and her production is that it is accessible to all kinds of audiences. "It was this achievement, of crossing from avant-garde obscurity into the so-called mainstream without compromising her ideas or aesthetic integrity, that would indelibly establish United States in the annals of art history (Goldberg, 2000, p. 11)." The immediate approach used by Anderson to make contact with her audience was innovative in the history of live art. Her performances showed that live art undergoes radical changes from the past tactics. Goldberg (2000) debates that Dadaists and Futurists in the 1920s and Fluxus artists in the 1960s provoked their audiences intentionally in order to grasp their attention. To shock the middle class was an attitude that the artists adopted through all kinds of performances with which they intended to raise questions about what meaning art conveys and how it is comprehended by the public. In her subtle approaches as a performer Anderson raised the level of awareness in her audience aiming to change their state of thinking. "She floated pictures- thousands of them, in the form of film or slide projections--before their eyes and used streams of words, straight- forwardly delivered but cleverly arranged and full of surprising observations (Goldberg, 2000, p.11)." Anderson is an extraordinary artist utilizing a variety of media technique to bring her message to the people. Goldberg (2000) poses that she floated between disciples, producing seamless borders between the audience and the artist. Crossing the boundaries, Anderson created an iconography of visual references, which stimulated the discussion of modern performance art and represent a new chapter from the book of visual arts. Stadler (1987) concludes that the slogan "art for art's sake" encapsulates an argument which stands against all poets, philosophers, and playwrights who assume that art has political or moral potency. Stadler (1987) sums up the current conventional wisdom of the mass audience that art conveys the meaning of art only if it is "entirely useless (p. 11)." Goodman (1982) pursues the path that traditional philosophical theories about the nature and value of art "distends and distorts a partial truth (p.198)." Goodman observes that what is missed by artists is that their performance should be a drive to instigate curiosity in the people and the aim of their performance is to enlighten. The generation of artists born in the mid 20th century rejects the aesthetic form of art. Vandalizing all sorts of artistic forms they critique the meaning of art and they strive to look for the problematic concerns that define the modern visual art - from the confines of the vast art galleries to the elaborate systems that control them. Modern performance simply can not think and represent one discipline at a time. In this sense, we can say that this supports the statement made by Goldberg (2001) that established art forms determine the direct impact that art has on the public. Not being able to present only one form or artistic discipline inevitably leads individuals to consider modern artistic performances anarchic ones. Visual art in the 20th century is a permissive one - it allows contradicting forms to be combined in one dramatic production, it is open-ended medium with numberless variable and as artists gain more confidence is scandalizing their public, they cross the limitations and create artistic disorder and chaos. Consequently, we can affirm that this corresponds to Goldberg's (2001) concept of modern art performances. Simon Piasecki is another example of an artist that challenges all forms in search of the lost identity of the artist in the 20th century. Much of his artistic work through the 1990s symbolizes the discourse of displacement and identity bewilderment. Piasecki work manifests the travel of the artist to the heart of his audience and how the audience accommodates the artist. Piasecki's artistic output was connected by interventionist action. Piasecki (n.d.) defines the modern artist as an intellectual who fears the "other". In some respects this is an expression of the artist's own subversive yearnings and his powerlessness. Piasecki (n.d.) remarks that people identify themselves in terms of their own safety - an illusory idea that they "belong" to something, to a group, to society. Thus, people are afraid of riots and insurgence, because they are ruining their safety idea. We can connect this primordial human fear with the opposition that artists had throughout the centuries of art history. Artists strived to provoke society and to make it face this fear of belonging. Because when we see that we are a minute participle in the universal processes we will overcome this fear and start act as artists. The irony here is that we inherit the belonging and fear concept from the social surrounding - family, relatives, educational institutions, or corporations. Often while we are attempting to cross the border, the social environment acts as barometer for our deeds, referring specifically to the fact that we are not allowed doing certain things. Namely these social obstacles artists tried to questions in the 20th century live art. Notions of the human dispersal are visible with the technological advancement and with the virtual proximity that modernity created. Piasecki (n.d.) noted that the virtually and the uncontrollable human migration is an aftershock for the artistic ideology and this was what inspired his performances and fascinated him to create unconventional artistic forms. Piasecki has the courage and the impetus to mingle and keep all mediums working simultaneously in order to deliver outstanding and stunning performances which to provoke the sedated public. His art is a gateway, determined to fragment the details in disproportion ways. The existential question that Piasecki (n.d.) is asking is whether it is possible for the transient and displaced identity of belonging to trespass the borders which he had built himself. The first assumption in discussing the art and the artistic excellent is to create a "taste of sense" to make the public believe that the focal point of the performance is to evoke a specific palette of sensations. Artists like Piasecki intentionally create works of art, not for the world of mass, but for the extravagant, shocking and trans-cultural artistic currents. A mass entertainment would be highly inappropriate for what Piasecki is aiming. Rather, he succeeds in delivering odd kinds of artistic forms to prove that extraordinary artwork can transcend various categories and reach wide audiences at the same time. Guillermo Gomes-Pena is another artist who explores particularly the cross-cultural issues and the relations between North and South America. He works in a variety of media, from performance art, to radio and television, bilingual poetry and journalism. Guillermo Gomes-Pena was born in Mexico city which triggered his main interests in analyzing and interpreting American and Mexican cultures. He was the catalyst who reinforced the idea that American culture might be viewed from the point of view of the contested territory along the border between the U.S. and Mexico (Gomez-Pea, 1996). The art focuses that Gomes-Pena utilizes are the exotic and folkloric stereotypes of the native country on one hand and the cultural nationalism usually associated with the political concepts of the Chicano art on the other hand. The originality of Guillermo Gomez-Pena's ideas are known as "Chicano cyber-punk art". His artwork revolves around the lost identity in a disoriented reality and around individuals who face multilinguistic environment and multicultural society. Gomez-Pena (1996) expresses the inherent confusion which individuals experience between colliding cultures. In his book he imagines a fictional nation which he names Aztlan Liberado where different identities, races, languages and genders mix to give birth to an amalgamated society. In Gomez-Pena's (1996) world there are no borders, no limits, the spoken language is Spanglish and the white race is a minority. Described as frenetic artist, "exotic multicultural" specimen and coining new vocabulary, Gomez-Pena shatters all artistic forms to present a dilapidated modern visual art, and to express the hunger for absurdity. His performances break the rules and activate the imagination. In another section from his book Guillermo Gomez-Pena utilized text and photographs to depict a performance. He is enclosed in a cage as a specimen from the "Guatinaui" people in the performance piece "Undiscovered Amerindians". Inside the cage the performer is clad in outrageous costumes, his face is coloured in leopard-like skin, with grass skirt and baseball cap (Gomez-Pea, 1996). Gomez-Pea's performances remind the people for the cultural "otherness" which we perceive involuntarily. With a jovial mockery Gomez-Pea tries to evoke in the audience the lost sensations for the other people and cultures. Modernity transformed individuals into fashion and pop martyrs who are in despair when faced with their real mirror-image reproduced by live art. So true is the statement made by Gomez-Pea (1996) that cultural identities are often represented to us as commodities. Nowadays people shop for their cultural identification like they shop for clothes and food. The performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Pea paves his way through the social jungle like a cultural dragon. Gomez-Pea (1996) suggests that only by reaching and accepting the inevitability of our human hybrid identity which is also innate, we can reconnect and establish a strong and long-lasing relation between ourselves and the others. His performances and projects are intermingled with political and social issues, astute and biting to a degree that borders with the grotesque and sardonic in life. With his live art Gomez-Pea shows us that we have to have the strength to laugh at our fallacies and to contemplate them from a short distance. He is conveying his ideas with electrically charged performances and inventiveness that shocks with its humour, word play, irony and absurdity. In his book Gomez-Pea (1996) comments that he uses his complex intellectual yearnings and intoxicating scents for the worlds around to give voice to the lost human spirituality. Mixing sounds, subdued candlelight and ambient music he produces a new ethnographic "diorama which is primarily based on religious reenactments depicted in Colonial Mexican churches. Gomez-Pea 's performances can be called affirmatively experimental ones, as he is featuring his live art in exotic places, in front of diverse audiences, collaborating across racial, gender and age boundaries and mentoring for universal citizen diplomacy. Gomez-Pea is an interdisciplinary artist who carries and transcends his binational concept and indulging people in public discussions and transmitting his affirmative actions for higher cultural understanding. 1980s and 1990s are defined by their overwhelming consumerism which drove the art world of these decades. "There was no longer much of an avant-garde left to comment on it anyway (Goldberg, 2000, p.14)." This conclusion makes as no surprise to us. The technology expansion brought the consumer insatiable desires. Lowell et al. (2001) trace the performing arts in America throughout the 20th century and seek explanation about the effects of the internet on the performance art. The dramatic increase in the demand for performing art demonstrates a key trend during the 20th century to look for extraordinary and absurd artistic destinations (Lowell et al, 2001). As if this confirms the thesis of Goldberg that the history of performance art in 20th century is surrounded by absurdities and knows no limitation. The expansive movements and trends that brought the performance art to such experimental depths transformed the very concept of art itself. New forms reappear to shake the conventional norms and beliefs. Marina Abramovic is an iconic performance artist. Yugoslavia born she started her career from the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade. From the 1970s she has pioneered "performance" as a visual art form and displayed her body both as a symbol of medium and as a subject. Abramovic explores the mental and physical limitations of her own existence and confronts exhaustion, pain and danger in her search for spiritual and emotional transmutation. One of her much commented recent projects is called "The House with the Ocean View". There Abramovic perceives all too literally the suffering and starving of the artist (Haber, n.d.). The drama that she wanted to convey to her audience was placed on three wooden platforms for a period of 12 days, and she was accompanied by a ticking metronome. Abramovic performance indicated her desire for liberalism, literal interpretation and floating mind. Haber (n.d.) sees Abramovic as an artist who balances the mental state of mind with the gallery's space and raises the role of the performer to the role of the revolutionary. The responsibility of the artist is to find a universal method to provoke the public and to go beyond the institutionalized segments of the performance. Abramovic self-exposure speaks of self-revelation, something which she aims to pass to her audience, too. To make people stop and listen to the silent that grew in ourselves triggered by the ongoing, hectic lifestyle. She tries to separate the body from the spirit, straining every muscle in her to demonstrate the ephemeral status of the body in front of the almighty spirituality. Incisions into her skin, or lying on nail, under burning candles, she stones her body with all sorts of tortures to disenchant the locked soul that we have inside us. Abramovic calls her performance "The House with an Ocean View" "living installation" (Haber, n.d.). This serves as a sober metaphor for the present - a modernity which we fear to contemplate. Daily life continues, however, the living installation shape ourselves leaves us breathless and bewildered. Another self-revelation project that Ambramovic commenced was the coffee cup design. She narrates the story while she was living in Yugoslavia and how important coffee breaks were, with people sitting silently around the table, converged in their cups. With the coffee or cigarette rituals it looks like people are afraid to spend some time in silence, reflecting upon their own thoughts or existence, simply being alone with themselves (Haber, n.d.). She has often been described as the "grandmother of performance art" and she has successfully employed the role of medium between the performance and the audience. Looking into the cup to see the future reminds us of the mirror-image that we are searching for. Telling the future from a cup of coffee relates to the Balkan roots that Abramovic never forgets. Abramovic applies with abundance photographs, objects, video installations and films into her projects sometimes reaching her own human and artistic limits. Her performances are everything, but ordinary and she prefers to face the "real" reality with telescopic scrutiny. Many people could not stand her performances - too outrageous to be named "art". Others consider the starvation in "The House with an Ocean View" just another gallery exhibition or morbid fascination of human suffering. Either way, viewers appreciate the arrogant and unpardonable attitude that Abramovic's performance art represents. Abromovic's performances are not only an artistic expression. They are healing, meditation and purification sessions in which people can relate to their inner selves and rebel against the repressive cultural, social and economic circumstances. In her performances, she pushes the limits of the physical potential utilizing such elements as fire, corporal punishments and objects or ice (Haber, n.d.). In 1997 she was awarded with Golden Lion at the Venice biennale where she showed the video installation and performance called "Balkan Baroque". There she was scrubbing animal bones. Who can handle more precisely the mix and extravagance better than Abramovic. Heathfield (2004) very practically addresses issues concerning the live art. The raises questions about the ethical use of animals, children, or dolls manufactured by living organism. He asks the rhetorical question: is this live art is all about Abuse of human body, medieval torture methods, manifestation of extraordinary sexual behavior, these are the tools that performance artists use to produce shocking effects and disgust the audience (Heathfield, 2004). Heathfield (2004) interprets such artistic performances as freakishness. What he fails to notify are the critical remarks and discussions why this is so, what lead to such absurd behaviour. The inherent problem associated with performance art is that it is commented out of the social and cultural environment. It is regarded as separate discipline, which is methodologically incorrect. The author is absorbed with the relativity of the art towards our modernity and wanted to express the self-contradictory endeavours that modern performance artists experience. Performance art especially during the second half of the 20th century overjumps audience's expectations, breaks art traditions and transforms cultural values and aesthetics. Incorporating various elements and practices from different genres, performance art blurred the boundaries between theatre, visual art and live art. Anomalies are something acceptable and public needs to be taken further and further in her imagination to amuse and entertain them. In this paper I tried to present different performance artists and to demonstrate that anarchic in live art is part of the cultural and social aspects that define art. Namely because of the rapid and unusually transformation of social and cultural values we can speak of artistic determination and no limitations in terms of employed elements. Live art and performance during the second half of the 20th century are one of the most controversial and ambivalent areas of art practice to appear. The very fact that performance art survived through the decades indicates that audience demands its presence. Even though the extravagance and absurdity involved, many people find this tendency meaningful and re-discover their spiritually in contemplating the performers. Affirmative, as it may be performance art in the 20th century thought us to follow our basic instincts, to break the rules, to carry real guns on the stage, to show openly our nudity and be as human as possible in explaining ourselves. Live art is indispensible source for self-exploration, self-challenging and self-destruction. Those activities keeps us vibrant with energy in seeking our physically and spiritual limitations. References: Fusco, CoCo.1995. English is Broken Here. New York: The New Press. Goldberg, Roselee, 2000. Laurie Anderson, Abrams Books. Goldberg, Roselee, 2001. Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present (World of Art), Thames & Hudson. Gomez-Pea, Guillermo, 1996. The New World Border: Prophecies, Poems, and Loqueras for the End of the Century . San Francisco: City Lights. Goodman, Nelson, 1982. "Art and Inquiry", in Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology, edited by Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison. New York: Harper & Row. Haber, John, (n.d.) About Suffering: Marina Abramovic: The House with an ocean view.[online] Available at: http://www.haberarts.com/marina.htm [Accessed 7 January 2010] Heathfield, Adrian. Live: Art and Performance. 2004. Routledge Lowell, Julia et al. The Performing Arts in a New Era, RAND, 2001. Piasecki, Simon, [online] Available at http://www.simonpiasecki.com [Accessed 8 January 2010] Stadler, Ingrid. 1987. Contemporary Art and Its Philosophical Problems, Prometheus Books, Read More