Performance Art from Futurism to the Present
Goldberg's Extensively Updated Modern Art History
Oct 15, 2009
In the introduction to the book, Performance Art from Futurism to the Present, Goldberg claims that the history of performance art is the story of a permissive, open-ended medium with endless variables. It evolved when artists, who were impatient with the limitations of more established forms of art, became determined to take their art directly to the public. It is for this reason that Goldberg claims Performance Art was anarchic.
The Difficulties of Trying to Define Performance
Goldberg goes on to discuss the difficulties of trying to define performance. Historians do not attempt to pin the movement down to more than a description of “live art performed by artists.” [2001,p9] Any attempt to define the genre more precisely, would negate the potentiality that characterises it. Performance, she says, draws freely on any number of disciplines and media for material. They are combinations of such areas as architecture, drama, theatre, music, dance, painting as well as video, film slides and narrative.
It is the artist who defines what the boundaries of their performance genres will be, by the very nature of the process they design and the manner in which they choose to execute the performance.
The Development of Performance as a Genre
The 1978 edition of the book, traced a story of the development of a genre that had previously been untold. The telling of this story, questioned the very nature of art itself. The book established the important role that performance played in establishing the nature of Art in the twentieth century.
The third edition went on to show how artists who chose performance were attempting to break free from the dominant media of painting, and sculpture. It was an attempt, she says, to break free from museum and gallery systems by using the provocative medium to respond to change. The genre dealt with challenges that resulted from change, whether this was political or cultural.
A later edition of the book, moved further towards revealing the role of performance art in challenging the barriers between high art and popular culture.
Performance Art and Reality
Performance art was touted as being more real than other forms of art ,because the presence of the artist and the focus of the artist’s body actually became central to the notion of “the real.“ This realness became the yardstick for installation and video art as well as photography in the late twentieth century, Goldberg says.
Performance Art and Cultural Studies
A revised and expanded edition of the same book takes the conversation further by referring to the increase in the number of performance artists worldwide. Performance art had (at least at that time) become the medium through which artist explored notions of the other. It was the chosen medium for articulating difference in discourses about multiculturalism within a global context.
Academia has now begun to focus on performance art as an important reference in cultural studies – whether in architecture, philosophy or anthropology. A theoretical language has developed with which to analyse and critically examine the impact of globalism on intellectual history.
No book has yet claimed to be an exhaustive history of performance art because of the depth and breadth of the movement. This author has set out to pursue the development of performance sensibility. Because this historical process is ever changing, the goal of the book remains to raise questions about the nature of performance art. The attempt is to gain access to insights into a wealth of experience taking place within the context of Art History.
Resources:
- Goldberg. R. Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present. Thames & Hudson Ed. 2001
Relevant Article:
- Art historian Jieun Rhee looks at the series of performances by Yoko Ono, within the context created by social, cultural, national and ethnic audience response in Performing the Other – an Article by Rhee
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