The historical avant-gardes set fire to the history of early 20th century art. RoseLee Goldberg‘s performance criticism clearly links the experiments of Futurism, Constructivism, Dada, Bauhaus and then Surrealism to the origin of the history of Performance Art in the 20th century. In this article I resume a brief history of Performance Art.
The birth of Performance Art
Over the course of the last century the body of the artist and his action acquire a central role in live art practice, gradually finding its own vocabulary in the term performance. The live relationship between the artist, the performing arts and the public, as well as the institutions that host the action, is nothing new in the history of art, but can be traced back to the stories around the fire of our ancestors, through rhapsods and Greek theatre, through medieval games, Renaissance and Baroque theatre, Opera, to Futurist events and Dada cabarets. During the twentieth century the performer no longer represents the myths of the gods, a mask or a character, but is the artist and the performance establishes its presence within society.
For Goldberg, performance by its very nature eludes a precise definition other than the simple description it gives in his essay: “live art by artists”. For Marina Abramovic, the performance stands out from the typically theatrical representation: “the only theatre I do is my own, my life is the only one I can act”[1]. But for the artist herself this statement does not imply that the performance rejects the theatre as a space for her own actions, on the contrary, RoseLee Goldberg highlights how it has influenced the renewal of the theatrical language itself. For critics of South African origin, performance tends to be a visual expression that does not require translation and focuses on the body; it uses the most up-to-date technologies, has a vocation for the ephemeral and universal gestures, has a short or very long duration and constructs very complex iconographies, ranging from social criticism to ancient rituals, from autobiographical elements to metartistic criticism.
Performance Art: from Futurists to Black Mountain College
Goldberg published one of the first studies on the history of performance art in 1979, when the rest of the art critics had begun to recognize performance as not an intermittent artistic expression, but a tangible expression of the reflections of conceptual art. In his essay he traces the roots of the history of performance in the 20th century back to the circles where avant-garde artists experimented with the ideas of their own posters before creating their visual expressions through painting or sculpture, such as the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich[2]. The fervor of Futurism should, therefore, be the first sparks of 20th century performance, passing from Europe to the United States through artists seeking shelter from war.
Since the 1940s, at Black Mountain College, John Cage and Merce Cunnigham have been investigating the notions of chance and indeterminacy, creating non-intentional music and a new dance practice, sympathizing with Eastern Zen philosophy and elaborating their reflections on the dawn of performance. “Art should not be distinguished from life, but should be an action within it. Like everything that happens in its course, with its accidental accidents, its complexity, its disorder and its rare moments of beauty” reflects Cage, who in 1952 presented his famous 4’33”, without producing any sound on the piano and letting the audience listen to the noises produced by the environment. In reference to this event, Cage states “my favourite piece is the one I always listen to all around me when everything is calm”[3].
The great season of Performance Art between the 50’s and 60’s
During the 1950s, John Cage’s classes were attended, among other artists, by Allan Kaprow, George Brecht, Dick Higgins, George Segal, Jim Dine, Claes Oldernburg and Robert Rauchenberg. In 1959 Kaprow gave life to the 18 Happenings in 6 Parts[4], which probably would have inspired the various actions of the group of artists labeled under the name Fluxus by the critic George Macunias in the early sixties and not only in the United States. In 1954 in Japan the Gutai group carried out a series of actions whose artists broke through canvases and painted directly with the body; between the late 1950s and early 1960s in Europe Yves Klein and Piero Manzoni also proposed actions with the aim of preventing art from being relegated to galleries or museums, the members of Viennese Actionism carried out their bloody performances and other artists such as Jackson Pollok and Nam June Paik also experimented with the action of the body in their respective artistic practices. Moreover, the actions of these years were not only performed by male artists: in addition to Atsuko Tanaka of the Gutai group, in 1961 Niki de Saint-Phalle presented his gunshot paintings, in 1963 Carolee Schneeman performed the famous Eye Body action and the following year Meat Joy, in 1965 Shigeko Kubota performed with Vagina Painting in New York, immediately establishing the presence of women in performance practice[5].
The student movements of 1968 marked the arrival of the 1970s, which led to the definitive recognition of performance within the history of art.
In these years the body and the presence of the artist, together with the experience of art simultaneously with the audience, assumed a central role for performance and some artists dedicated themselves completely to performance[6]. The actions of these performers were also very different: they could be short or long; they could be intimate, or act on a large scale; they could be programmed or improvised; they could be autobiographical or shocking, esoteric or satirical; they could deal with social criticism, talk about marginalized groups, diversity, or art itself, the relationship with its market and the relationship between artist and audience.
Performance Art between 20th and 21st century
The performance is, therefore, a complex artistic expression, which struggles to recognize itself in a broader definition than that provided by Goldberg. My research considers the performance of the 20th century as an experience in which the performer is the artist who establishes his or her presence within society. For performance critics, when at the beginning of the 21st century the museum also becomes a place of entertainment, performance becomes an opportunity for a direct encounter with the artist and an opportunity for conversation about the role of art in the world[7]. At the end of the first decade of our century, the 2009 exhibition at MoMA 100 Years of Performance Art shows on a hundred or so monitors the history of Performance Art since the Futurist Manifesto of 1909, testifying to the role of performance in the history of art of the previous century, and the 2010 retrospective performance by Marina Abramovic The Artist Is Present[8] at the same museum confirms the centrality of the artist’s presence in contemporary art. A presence that is always complex in its relationship with the public, the institutions and its market.
Approaching the 1920s, performance continues to be an expression used by artists to investigate the complex relationships between artistic practice, those involved in it and everyday life, addressing central issues in international debate through actions that still continue to be unconventional and anarchic. The constant social attention of the performance seems to keep alive the research on the relationship between artistic practice and everyday life.
[1] Thornton S., 33 artists in 3 acts, Feltrinelli, 2015.
[2] The Cabaret Voltaire from 5 February 1916 began to host the poems and interventions of some of the most influential artists of the time such as Kandinsky, Lichtenstein, Arp and Tzara.
[3] Cage J., Notations, New York, 1969.
[4] Kaprow A., Assemblage, Environments & Happenings, New York, 1966.
[5] Jones A., Body Art: Performing the Subject, Minnesota University Press, 1998.
[6] It was precisely during the 1970s that some artists began to devote themselves methodically to performance art, among them: Marina Abramovic, Bruce Nauman, Gina Pane, Gilbert&George, Vito Acconci, Joan Jonas, Chris Burden and Ana Mendieta.
[7] Goldberg R., The First Decade of the New Century 2001 to 2010, in Performance Art. From Futurism to Present, Thames&Hudson, 2011 edition.
[8] MOMA, Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present, Exh.Cat. 2010.
