Performance art
Definition Art form that incorporates live
performance alongside other aesthetic modes
Performance art continued some of the practices of earlier
generations in the 1980’s. However, young artists, reared
in a culture saturated with media, adopted new, sometimes
marketable forms. As a result peformance art sometimes
blurred together with video art, cabaret, and mass cultural
forms.
Performance art of the 1980’s built upon the avant-
garde developments of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Older
performance artists pushed their experimentation,
while a raft of young practitioners defined them-
selves as only performance artists. Multidisciplinary
collaborations, changes in available technology, new
venues, and evolving relations with art institutions
gave the decade its particular flavor. Performance
art explored many themes, such as autobiography,
identity, and the body, as well as such political issues
as AIDS, homelessness, and multiculturalism. Many
works sought to question and perhaps to bridge the
gulfs between art and life, as well as those between
high art and mass culture.
Definitions and Origins Precise definitions of per-
formance art are difficult, especially in the 1980’s. It
is generally live art. It may, however, be improvisa-
tional work by a single artist presented only once, or
it may be a large collaboration of actors, dancers,
musicians, and visual artists with casts, scripts, and
sets that are repeated in many nearly identical offer-
ings. Some pieces were lost after their presentation;
others were intensely documented, and many con-
tinued to exist in video form. Some artists defied the
art market’s desire to commodify their work, while
other artists “cashed in” on their rising fame. The or-
igins of late twentieth century performance art are
to be found in the often outrageous works of the
avant-garde during the early part of the century. The
Futurists and the Surrealists, especially, set the pa-
rameters many later artists obeyed. The period of
the late 1960’s and 1970’s is sometimes called a
“golden age” of performance: During this period of
activism, artists drew on and contested modernism
and conceptual art. “Identity politics”—especially
some forms of feminism—found expression through
performance art, and much of that work (especially
in the 1960’s) was polemical in nature.
Performance Art in the 1980’s Unlike the artists of
earlier generations, who had created performance
art by rejecting the confines of traditional arts, artists
of the 1980’s frequently defined themselves as per-
formance artists throughout their careers. They cre-
ated bodies of work that evolved and developed over
time. They also sought recognition and a livelihood
from this work. Many of the artists coming of age in
the decade were thoroughly familiar with mass cul-
tural forms such as television and rock music, and
many were comfortable with evolving computer and
video technologies. They used these mass culture el-
ements, deliberately blurring the lines between high
art and popular culture. As a result, some artists
moved into film, and some performance art devel-
oped into “standard entertainment.” Still other work
retained its political and outrageous edginess.
The decade culminated in the 1989 congressional
debate over censorship and funding for the Na-
tional Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Among the
artists precipitating the NEA crisis were two perfor-
mance artists, Karen Finley and Tim Miller. The per-
formance art of such controversial artists was often
confrontational, responding to and targeting public
ignorance and entrenched institutions, including
the government that sometimes funded the work. As
engaged in by significant artists of color, perfor-
mance art of the 1980’s acted out multiculturalism,
joining in a broader cultural conversation taking
place in literature and the academy as well.
In addition to taking on institutions, performance
artists of the 1980’s found themselves negotiating
their own institutionalization. On one hand, perfor-
mance art was recognized as a valid art form by
museums, resulting in numerous shows and even
retrospective exhibitions. Specialized performance
publications were created, art critics analyzed per-
formance, and art schools incorporated it into their
curricula. Artists in the process of denying the sepa-
ration of high art from mass culture had to deter-
mine how to respond to the decision of artistic insti-
tutions to label their work as art.
On the other hand, performance art also re-
mained in the sphere of mass culture, as it was insti-
tutionalized through the market as well. New perfor-
mance venues were created to showcase the form
and to make its production lucrative. Special perfor-
mance art galleries appeared; performance clubs
or cabarets presented monologue artists; and large-
scale operatic performances and works combining754 Performance art The Eighties in America