Performance and Conceptual Art and New Media
Among the most significant developments in the art world after
World War II has been the expansion of the range of works considered
“art.” Some of the new types of artworks are the result of the invention
of new media, such as computers and video cameras. But the new art
forms also reflect avant-garde artists’ continued questioning of the
status quo. For example, in keeping with the modernist critique of
artistic principles, some artists, in a spirit reminiscent of Dada and
Surrealism (see Chapter 35), developed the fourth dimension—
time—as an integral element of their artwork. The term that art histo-
rians use to describe these temporal works is Performance Art.
Performance Art
Performance artists replace traditional stationary artworks with
movements, gestures, and sounds carried out before an audience,
whose members may or may not participate in the performance. Gen-
erally, documentary photographs taken contemporaneously are the
only evidence remaining after these performances. The informal and
spontaneous events Performance artists initially staged anticipated the
rebellion and youthful exuberance of the 1960s and at first pushed art
outside the confines of mainstream art institutions (museums and
galleries). Performance Art also served as an antidote to the affectation
of most traditional art objects and challenged art’s function as a com-
modity. In the later 1960s, however, museums commissioned perfor-
mances with increasing frequency, thereby neutralizing much of the
subversiveness that characterized this new art form.
JOHN CAGEMany of the artists instrumental in the develop-
ment of Performance Art were students or associates of the charis-
matic American teacher and composer John Cage (1912–1992).
Cage encouraged his students at both the New School for Social Re-
search in New York and Black Mountain College in North Carolina
to link their art directly with life. He brought to music composition
some of the ideas of Duchamp and of Eastern philosophy. Cage used
methods such as chance to avoid the closed structures marking tra-
ditional music and, in his view, separating it from the unpredictable
and multilayered qualities of daily existence. For example, the score
for one of Cage’s piano compositions instructs the performer to ap-
pear, sit down at the piano, raise the keyboard cover to mark the be-
ginning of the piece, remain motionless at the instrument for 4 min-
utes and 33 seconds, and then close the keyboard cover, rise, and
bow to signal the end of the work. The “music” would be the un-
planned sounds and noises (such as coughs and whispers) emanat-
ing from the audience during the “performance.”
ALLAN KAPROW One of Cage’s students in the 1950s was Al-
lan Kaprow (b. 1927). Schooled in art history as well as music com-
position, Kaprow sought to explore the intersection of art and life.
He believed, for example, that Jackson Pollock’s actions when pro-
ducing a painting (FIG. 36-6) were more important than the finished
painting. This led Kaprow to develop a type of event known as a
Happening.He described a Happening as
an assemblage of events performed or perceived in more than one
time and place. Its material environments may be constructed, taken
over directly from what is available, or altered slightly: just as its
activities may be invented or commonplace. A Happening, unlike
a stage play, may occur at a supermarket, driving along a highway,
under a pile of rags, and in a friend’s kitchen, either at once or se-
quentially. If sequentially, time may extend to more than a year.The Happening is performed according to plan but without
rehearsal, audience, or repetition. It is art but seems closer to life.^36
Happenings were often participatory. One Happening consisted
of a constructed setting with partitions on which viewers wrote
phrases, while another involved spectators walking on a pile of tires.
One of Kaprow’s first Happenings, titled 18 Happenings in Six Parts,
took place in 1959 at the Reuben Gallery in New York City. For the
event, he divided the gallery space into three sections with translu-
cent plastic sheets. Over the course of the 90-minute piece, perform-
ers, including Kaprow’s artist friends, bounced balls, read from plac-
ards, extended their arms like wings, and played records as slides and
lights flashed on and off in programmed sequences.
FLUXUSOther Cage students interested in the composer’s search
to find aesthetic potential in the nontraditional and commonplace
formed the Fluxus group. Eventually expanding to include European
and Japanese artists, this group’s performances were more theatrical
than Happenings. To distinguish their performances from Happen-
ings, the artists associated with Fluxus coined the term Events to de-
scribe their work. Events focused on single actions, such as turning a
light on and off or watching falling snow—what Fluxus artist La
Monte Young (b. 1935) called “the theater of the single event.”^37 The
Events usually took place on a stage separating the performers from
the audience but without costumes or added decor. Events were not
spontaneous. They followed a compositional “score,” which, given
the restricted nature of these performances, was short.
KAZUO SHIRAGA Some artists produced works that involved
both painting and performance. Gutai Bijutsu Kyokai (Concrete Art
Association), a group of 18 Japanese artists in Osaka, expanded the
action of painting into the realm of performance—in a sense, taking
Jackson Pollock’s painting methods into a public arena. Led by Jiro
Yoshihara (1905–1972), Gutai, founded in 1954, devoted itself to art
that combined Japanese traditional practices such as Zen (see “Zen
Buddhism,” Chapter 28, page 736) with a renewed appreciation for
materials. In the Gutai Art Manifesto,Yoshihara explained: “Gutai
does not alter the material. Gutai imparts life to the material....
[T]he human spirit and the material shake hands with each other, but
keep their distance.”^38 Accordingly, Gutai works, for example,Mak-
ing a Work with His Own Body(FIG. 36-75), by Kazuo ShiragaPerformance and Conceptual Art and New Media 1017Image not available due to copyright restrictions