Performance Art
Contemporary Visual Arts Form, 'Happenings': Performance Artists Marcel Duchamp, Jean Dubuffet, Kurt Schwitters, Sol LeWitt, Allan Kaprow.
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Performance Art

This new form of contemporary art, which emerged out of Happenings and Installation, and became a major phenomenon during the late 1960s and 1970s, takes as its medium the artist himself, the actual artwork being the artist's actions. Performance art has always been more theatrical, at times ritualistic, and normally more scripted than its immediate forebears, often taking acting and movement to extremes of expression and endurance not permitted in the theatre. Words are rarely prominent, while music and noises of various kinds often are.

Although this form of art is not easy to define precisely, one important feature is the requirement for the artist to perform or express his 'art' before live audience. For example, allowing the audience to view an interesting assemblage or installation sculpture would not be considered performance art, but having them watch the artist construct an installation, would be.

In keeping with the historical traditions of the Surrealists and Dadaists, the line between Performance art and exhibitionism is often kept deliberately thin. Due to the ephemeral nature of the medium, performance events were often recorded on film and video, and ultimately these recordings became the principal means by which Performance was disseminated to the public at large.

Performance In Vienna (2005)
by Lisa Bufano.

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Origins of Performance Art

Ever since German Expressionism in the 1900s, twentieth century art has seen a continuing series of contemporary movements rejecting the formalist conventions of traditional art - in which pride of place is given to the painting, sculpture or other physical work of art in question - and focusing instead on the 'message' or 'concept' of the artwork. These include the Dada and Surrealist movements, Futurism, Conceptual art, Assemblage, Installations and Happenings, all of whom form the intellectual origins of Performance.

Key participants in these movements include the so-called father of Conceptual Art Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), the faux naif artist Jean Dubuffet (1901-85), the loner Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) and his 'Merzbau' assemblage, the avant-garde composer John Milton Cage Jr (1912–1992) who created the the 4-33 'silent' symphony, Sol LeWitt (b.1928) the High Priest of Conceptualism and his influential essay 'Paragraphs on Conceptual Art' (1967), the Assemblage exponent and theorist Allan Kaprow (b.1927). Dramatic, humorous or irreverant events, verging on Performance art, were consciously or unconsciously staged by all these individuals, to publicize their artistic ideas.

Performance Artists

The immediate stimulus for Performance art was the series of theatrical Happenings staged by Allan Kaprow and others in New York in the late 1950s. In 1961, Yves Klein (1928-62) presented three models covered in his trademark blue paint, who moved their bodies around leaving prints on white paper. In the early 1960s several other American conceptual artists such as Robert Morris (b.1931) Bruce Naumann (b.1941) and Dennis Oppenheim began to include Performance in their repertoires.

In Germany, Performance was known as Actionism, influenced in part by Hans Namuth's 1950 photographs of the Abstract Expressionist artist Jackson Pollock (1915-56) performing his 'action paintings,' although strictly speaking the term Actionism relates to the Vienna based group Wiener Aktionismus founded in 1962. Leading members of Aktionismus were Gunter Brus (b.1938), Hermann Nitsch (b.1938) and Rudolph Schwarzkogler, whose theatrical Performances (Aktionen and Demonstrationen) - supposedly designed to highlight Man's violent nature - incorporated shocking exhibitions of self-torture and pseudo-religious rituals. The strident nature of the group's philosophy of art was also reflected in actions by the Viennese artist Arnulf Rainer. More powerful during the 1960s, were the war-inspired Performance actions of German artist Joseph Beuys (1921-86) the German Professor of Monumental Sculpture at the Dusseldorf Academy of Arts.

British Performance artists included Stuart Brisley (b.1933), as well as the great exponents of postmodernism Gilbert Proesch (b.1943) and George Passmore (b.1942) - more popularly known as Gilbert and George - a duo who teamed up in 1969 at St Martins School of Art in London, and became known as 'living sculptures'. The idea was to turn themselves into sculpture, thus erasing their separate identities for the sake of art. To that end, they became interchangeable cyphers and even dropped their surnames. They painted their faces, dressed in identical clothes, and staged 'one-man' shows during which they mimed to the popular tune 'Underneath the Arches'. After travelling around British art schools, they toured the Continent, America, Japan, Australia, and China, enlarging their range of 'living sculpture' with a distinctly 'British' tone, in the process. Their subject matter encompassed inner-city decay, Margaret Thatcher-worship, anti-Royalism and more, typically presented in a strident manner, and accompanied by a wide range of visual art products including postcard sculptures, films, videos and installations. The ultimate Performance, say the critics, but is it art? Whatever the answer, the whole world seems to have responded to it.

Other Performance Artists

Other famous artists who have included Performance in their repertoire include: Laurie Anderson, Eric Bogosian, Chong Ping, Martha Clark, Ethyl Eichelberger, Karen Finley, Richard Foreman, Dan Graham, Rebecca Horn, Holly Hughes, Joan Jonas, Suzanne Lacy, Tim Miller, Meredith Monk, Linda Montano, Yoko Ono, Rachel Rosenthal, and Carolee Schneermann.

Like several contemporary art movements, Performance is acted out for it's own sake and according to its own priorities. Sometimes resembling a circus act, at times amusing, offensive - even repulsive, it challenged conventional ethics and (above all) our notion of what art is, or should be.

• For more information about avant-garde art in Ireland, see: Irish Visual Art.

• How to Update This Mini Review of Performance Art.

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