the Yugoslavian-born Marina Abramovic (1946–),
who often performs nude, allowing her body to be
slammed, pushed past, or otherwise stressed as in
Rhythm 0, of 1974, and Chris Burden (1946–), the
Californian conceptualist notorious for having him-
selfshotinthearm.Leadingcontemporary artfigure
Bruce Nauman (1941–) has learned from modern
dance that simple everyday actions can be art; his
spoutingof a streamof waterSelf-Portrait asa Foun-
tain(1966–1967) in homage to Marcel Duchamp’s
famous urinal titledFountain, has become an icon
of postwar contemporary art. Figures who emerged
in the 1980s often explored popular culture, such
as Californian Paul McCarthy (1945–) who pushes
American popular culture to the limits of good taste
with often scatological actions in which individuals
wear Santa Claus costumes or Mickey Mouse ears.
The Cuban-born Ana Mendieta (1948–1985) and
American Dennis Oppenheim (1938–) fuse body
and land art, while the Japanese artist Yayoi Ku-
sama (1929–), who lives in the United States, uses
her body as a sign of sexual liberation and political
protest. Feminism came to the fore in the late 1960s
and early 1970s in America with Carolee Schneeman
(1939–) in her body-in-motion film and performance
works, with Hannah Wilke (1940–1993) in her nar-
cissistic poses and role-playing, and in Europe with
Gina Pane (1936–1990) in her acts of auto-aggres-
sion, including a famous action in which she sliced
her face with a razor blade,Psycheof 1974.
A principle in the Vienna Actionism movement,
Gu ̈nther Brus (1938–) reduces the body to its most
basic functions; the German Rebecca Horn (1944–)
expands it with prosthetic devices; and the Cyprus-
born Stelarc (1946–) dreams of a post-biological
body. These artists plumb the limits of the body,
set free suppressed fears and repressed feelings, and
overstep taboos, and the radical, asymbolic corpor-
ality of earlier body art raises actions to a legendary,
mythic standing. Nevertheless, they were largely
forgotten in the 1980s—a decade that favored paint-
ing—and were rediscovered in the 1990s.
Critical to their rise, as the body artists always
emphasize, were the social and political events of the
1960s. More directly than other genres, body art
transported the conflicts and attitudes of the civil
rights and protest movements, sexual liberation,
feminism, rock and pop culture, the explosion of
mass media, and the atmosphere of disruption and
violence. Noteworthy in this respect is the great
number of women who took part, as well as the
fact that body art, was for many artists, such as
William Wegman, Dennis Oppenheim, Barry Le
Va, Stuart Brisley, Keith Arnett, Valie Export, and
Lucas Samaras, only one episode in their lifework.
Critic Willoughby Sharp coined the term ‘‘body
works’’in1970.Hesawinitavariationofconceptual
art inasmuch as it followed a firm dramaturgy. Eu-
ropean theorists such as Lea Vergine and Franc ̧ois
Pluchart, who had earlier worked in psychoanalytic
interpretation, expanded Sharp’s definition.
Body works exist in many variations: as perfor-
mance and also in the form of photography, film,
video, and text. In contrast to other artistic devel-
opments directed toward performance, these call for
the participation of the public only in a limited way
or not at all; to shut out distractions, many artists
exclude the public altogether. This restricts the
effect of their works; so, in general, to keep the
works from falling into oblivion, artists have resor-
ted to using reproductive technologies, which have
become immensely important if not absolutely una-
voidable as they are in the case of happenings,
action art, and land art. Most artists engaging in
body art have great appreciation for these art move-
ments; the development and perfection of body art
owes much to the possibility of recording and dis-
tributing ephemeral artistic experiments. Since the
1960s, recording equipment has become less and less
expensive, enabling individual artists to purchase
and use it.
Only by recording their works does their art
become a product that they can exhibit and market.
Instead of the ‘‘original,’’ they show exhibits of pho-
tos, film stills, and video prints, which are offered to
the art market. A famous example is the edition
called ‘‘Eleven Color Photographs (1966–1967) of
Bruce Nauman’s, which includedSelf-Portrait as a
Fountain. A very few artists with an especially rigid
ethos decline to record their works, such as Ulay
and (Marina) Abramovic in the early phase of their
collaboration; they distrusted the truth of photo-
graphy and considered marketing their art a com-
mercial excess. This is why the black-and-white
photo documentary of their collaborative perfor-
mancesRelation in Space(Venice Biennial, 1976)
andExpansion in Time(Documenta 6, 1977) comes
across as simplistic and blurry; only in the 1980s did
they begin to allow photo editions of their work. These
artistsstandagainst recording was anexception.
To prevent posthumous distortions of his art,
Chris Burden allowed his body works to be carefully
photographed and, occasionally, filmed, and he
controlled their publication. Documenting his start
in the 1970s, he released plays in book format,Chris
Burden 71–73(Los Angeles, 1974). Burden estab-
lished a prototype for their presentation in which he
meticulously communicates his intentions with a
photograph and a description of the project. Des-
pite their considerable length, his works can be cap-BODY ART