Body art is art in which the artist uses their human body as the primary medium. [1] Emerging from the context of Conceptual Art during the 1970s, [2] Body art may include performance art. Body art is likewise utilized for investigations of the body in an assortment of different media including painting, casting, photography, film and video. [3] More extreme body art can involve mutilation or pushing the body to its physical limits.
In more recent times, the body has become a subject of much broader discussion and treatment than can be reduced to body art in its common understanding. Important strategies that question the human body are: implants, body in symbiosis with the new technologies, virtual avatar bodies, among others.
Body art has been expanded into the popular culture and now covers a wide spectrum of usage, including tattoos, body piercings, scarification, and body painting. Photographer Spencer Tunick is well known for conducting photo shoots which gather large numbers of naked people at public locations around the world. [4]
Body art often deals with issues of gender and personal identity and common topics include the relationship between body and psyche. [3]
The Vienna Action Group was formed in 1965 by Hermann Nitsch, Otto Mühl, Günter Brus, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. [5] They performed several body art actions. In the United States Carolee Schneemann, Chris Burden and Vito Acconci were very active participants. Acconci once documented, through photos and text, his daily exercise routine of stepping on and off a chair for as long as possible over several months. Acconci also performed Following Piece, in which he followed randomly chosen New Yorkers. [6]
In France, body art was termed art corporel and practiced by such artists as Michel Journiac, Orlan and Gina Pane while in Italy in the 1980s, one of the famous artists in the movement was Ketty La Rocca. [7]
Marina Abramović performed Rhythm 0 in 1974. In the piece, the audience was given instructions to use on Abramović's body an array of 72 provided instruments of pain and pleasure, including knives, feathers, and a loaded pistol. Audience members cut her, pressed thorns into her belly, applied lipstick to her, removed her clothes, and held a loaded pistol to her head. Accounts vary as to how the performance concluded, some stating it ended after a scuffle broke out in the audience over their conduct, while Abramović retells that the artwork simply came to an end after the intended six hours, at which time she stood and walked towards the audience, which fled. [8] [9] [10]
Artists whose works have evolved with more directed personal mythologies include Rebecca Horn, Youri Messen-Jaschin, Javier Perez, and Jana Sterbak. [11] Body art can also be expressed via writing rather than painting.
For example, one of Marina Abramović's works involved dancing until she collapsed from exhaustion, while one of Dennis Oppenheim's better-known works saw him lying in the sunlight with a book on his chest, until his skin, excluding that covered by the book, was badly sunburned. It can even consist of the arrangement and dissection of preserved bodies in an artistic fashion, as was for the plastinated bodies used in the travelling Body Worlds exhibition.
Scientific research in this area, for example that by Stelarc, can be considered in this artistic vein. [12] A special case of the body art strategies is the absence of body. Some artists who performed the "absence" of body through their artworks were: Davor Džalto, Antony Gormley, and Andy Warhol.
Burning Man festival is held annually in the Black Rock Desert of northwest Nevada (US), in September. Jake Lloyd Jones, a Sydney-based artist, conceived the Sydney Body Art Ride, which has become an annual event. Participants are painted to form a living rainbow that rides to the Pacific Ocean and immerses itself in the waves. [13]
Body art, specifically painting on the body is a newly incorporated skill in the medical industry primarily used for schooling. While the primary method for learning bodily physiology is through examining cadavers according to Gabrielle Flinn, some students are very off put by this practice. [14] Organizations are now considering using body painting as a functional, low-cost, and positive way of learning about the inner-workings of anatomical structures through painting. This would consist of medical students painting on, or working with, willing volunteers who have been painted on to expose various body parts such as: lungs, muscles in hands, legs, etc. Hands are the most typically chosen as the patient does not have to undress for the painting examination, however, with consent of the volunteer patient, medical students could paint other areas such as the back. This would allow the medical students to not only learn more about anatomy in a positive manner but also have real life practice in bedside manners, and making sure their patients are comfortable, and well taken care of through the entire process.
Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting. Video art can take many forms: recordings that are broadcast; installations viewed in galleries or museums; works either streamed online, or distributed as video tapes, or on DVDs; and performances which may incorporate one or more television sets, video monitors, and projections, displaying live or recorded images and sounds.
Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a public in a fine art context in an interdisciplinary mode. Also known as artistic action, it has been developed through the years as a genre of its own in which art is presented live. It had an important and fundamental role in 20th century avant-garde art.
Vito Acconci was an American performance, video and installation artist, whose diverse practice eventually included sculpture, architectural design, and landscape design. His performance and video art was characterized by "existential unease," exhibitionism, discomfort, transgression and provocation, as well as wit and audacity, and often involved crossing boundaries such as public–private, consensual–nonconsensual, and real world–art world. His work is considered to have influenced artists including Laurie Anderson, Karen Finley, Bruce Nauman, and Tracey Emin, among others.
Marina Abramović is a Serbian conceptual and performance artist. Her work explores body art, endurance art, the relationship between the performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. Being active for over four decades, Abramović refers to herself as the "grandmother of performance art". She pioneered a new notion of identity by bringing in the participation of observers, focusing on "confronting pain, blood, and physical limits of the body". In 2007, she founded the Marina Abramović Institute (MAI), a non-profit foundation for performance art.
Rhythm 0 was a six-hour long endurance art performed by the Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović in Naples in 1974. The work involved Abramović standing still while the audience was invited to do to her whatever they wished, using one of 72 objects she had placed on a table. These included a rose, feather, perfume, honey, bread, grapes, wine, scissors, a scalpel, nails, a metal bar, a gun, and a bullet.
Body painting is a form of body art where artwork is painted directly onto the human skin. Unlike tattoos and other forms of body art, body painting is temporary, lasting several hours or sometimes up to a few weeks. Body painting that is limited to the face is known as face painting. Body painting is also referred to as "temporary tattoo". Large scale or full-body painting is more commonly referred to as body painting, while smaller or more detailed work can sometimes be referred to as temporary tattoos.
Seven Easy Pieces was a series of performances given by artist Marina Abramović in New York City at the Guggenheim Museum in November 2005. All performances were dedicated to Abramović's late friend Susan Sontag.
Seedbed is a performance piece first performed by Vito Acconci on 15–29 January 1972 at Sonnabend Gallery in New York City.
Frank Uwe Laysiepen, known professionally as Ulay, was a German artist based in Amsterdam and Ljubljana, who received international recognition for his Polaroid art and collaborative performance art with longtime companion Marina Abramović.
Feminist art is a category of art associated with the feminist movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. Feminist art highlights the societal and political differences women experience in their lives. The goal of this art form is to bring a positive and understanding change to the world, leading to equality or liberation. Media used range from traditional art forms, such as painting, to more unorthodox methods such as performance art, conceptual art, body art, craftivism, video, film, and fiber art. Feminist art has served as an innovative driving force toward expanding the definition of art by incorporating new media and a new perspective.
Endurance art is a kind of performance art involving some form of hardship, such as pain, solitude or exhaustion. Performances that focus on the passage of long periods of time are also known as durational art or durational performances.
Eva & Franco Mattes are a duo of artists based in New York City, operating under the pseudonym 0100101110101101.org.
Odyssey Works is an interdisciplinary performance collective founded by Abraham Burickson and Matthew Purdon in San Francisco in 2001. The group, composed of artists practicing in various disciplines, creates 24hr performances for just one person.
Bert Rodriguez is an American visual artist and composer based in Los Angeles, California. Rodriguez is most notable for his performance art but also works with a wide range of other media and genres including, installation, photography, sculpture, film, video and sound. Rodriguez uses various methods to translate his ideas which explore the relationship existing between art and audience. A winner of a Frieze Foundation Commission, his work has been displayed in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, in Berlin at Sassa Trülzsch and in Naples at Annarumma 404, among others. Rodriguez has a BFA in painting from New World School of the Arts in Miami, Florida, and also attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine.
The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to produce art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and perception of contemporary art. It also seeks to bring more visibility to women within art history and art practice. The movement challenges the traditional hierarchy of arts over crafts, which views hard sculpture and painting as superior to the narrowly perceived 'women's work' of arts and crafts such as weaving, sewing, quilting and ceramics. Women artists have overturned the traditional view by, for example, using unconventional materials in soft sculptures, new techniques such as stuffing, hanging and draping, and for new purposes such as telling stories of their own life experiences. The objectives of the feminist art movement are thus to deconstruct the traditional hierarchies, represent women more fairly and to give more meaning to art. It helps construct a role for those who wish to challenge the mainstream narrative of the art world. Corresponding with general developments within feminism, and often including such self-organizing tactics as the consciousness-raising group, the movement began in the 1960s and flourished throughout the 1970s as an outgrowth of the so-called second wave of feminism. It has been called "the most influential international movement of any during the postwar period."
Cheryl Donegan is an American conceptual artist. She is known for her video works, such as Head (1993) and Kiss My Royal Irish Ass (1992), which targeted the cliches of the female body in art and other issues of art politics.
Rest Energy is a 1980 performance art piece created, enacted, and recorded by performance artist duo Marina Abramović and Ulay in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Four minutes in duration, Abramović has described it as one of the most difficult pieces she has ever done, saying
I was not in charge. In Rest Energy we actually held an arrow on the weight of our bodies, and the arrow is pointed right into my heart. We had two small microphones near our hearts, so we could hear our heartbeats. As our performance was progressing, heartbeats were becoming more and more intense, and though it lasted just four minutes and ten seconds, I’m telling you, for me it was forever. It was a performance about the complete and total trust.
Breathing In, Breathing Out is a performance piece by Marina Abramović and Ulay. It was performed twice, in Belgrade (1977) and Amsterdam (1978). For this performance the two artists blocked their nostrils with cigarette filters and pressed their mouths together, so that one couldn’t inhale anything else but the exhalation of the other. As the carbon dioxide filled their lungs, they began to sweat, move vehemently and wear themselves out; the viewers could sense their agony through the projected sound of breathing, which was augmented via microphones attached to their chests. It took them 19 minutes in the first performance and 15 in the second to consume all the oxygen in that one breath and reach the verge of passing out.
Melati Suryodarmo is an Indonesian durational performance artist. Her physically demanding performances make use of repetitive motions and often last for many hours, sometimes reaching "a level of factual absurdity". Suryodarmo has performed and exhibited throughout Europe and Asia as well as in North America. Born in Surakarta, she attended Padjadjaran University, graduating with a degree in international relations before moving to Germany. She lived there for 20 years, studying performance art at the Braunschweig University of Art with Butoh choreographer Anzu Furukawa and performance artist Marina Abramović.
0 to 9 was a literary magazine that was published between 1967 and 1969 edited by Vito Acconci and Bernadette Mayer in New York City. Produced cheaply with a small print run, 0 to 9's content explored issues around language, performance art, visual art and meaning making. It contained a mixture of out-of-copyright material and new work by emerging artists and is viewed as one of the most experimental journals of the mimeograph era.
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