Edward Higgins, August 2014
Edward Higgins is a member of The Association Internationale Des Critiques d’Art.
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The thing about performance art is that you have to be there. It’s like the theater—you snooze, you lose. Then again if you run into a piece of performance art how are you expected to know it, understand it, and, potentially, enjoy it?
According to RoseLee Goldberg, “Performance became accepted as a medium of artistic expression in its own right in the 1970s. At that time, conceptual art—which insisted on an art of ideas over product and as art that could not be bought and sold—was in its heyday and performance art was often a demonstration or an execution, of those ideas.”
Performance Art 101 is currently on display at the Delaware Art Museum and ready to educate those who can’t tell performance art from a baseball game. The class comes in the form of two separate exhibitions: one that celebrates the history of the genre, and one that looks at works from the past ten years.
“Retroactive: Performance Art from 1964 – 1987” is curated by Margaret Winslow of the Museum and includes six videos of performance art beginning in 1964. It is located in tucked away Gallery 9 and carries a disclaimer regarding children due to nudity. “Performance Now” is a traveling show curated by RoseLee Goldberg with the work of 21 artists since 2000.
Both shows are in the form of videos which the notes say were “transformed by the artists to a ‘solid’ more permanent form.” Both shows run through September 21.
Goldberg is also the author of a seminal” work, Performance Art from Futurism to the Present, which seeks to give this form of art a history, no doubt to give it added credibility—the Futurists through Constructivism, Dada, Surrealism, and Bauhaus.
Goldberg is an art historian, born in South Africa, educated in London, and currently teaching at New York University. She has also approved of music videos by Jay Z.
The “Performance Now” show features works by Marina Abramovic, Jerome Bel, Spartacus Chetwynd, William Kentridge, and Clifford Owens. Among the videos are a bullfighter facing an invisible bull, various people using a hula hoop (there are a number of real hula hoops for those inclined), a make-believe opera with all the clichés, a jumble of nude folks, and an oddly moving video of various people mouthing the apologies of former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner.
Some of the concepts or ideas are difficult to follow, such as extensive “Floyd on the Floor” which involves several people of both sexes dressed in costumes parading around and doing amateur acrobatics. The piece was done by Kelly Nipper.
“Retroactive” features a few more recognized names such as Chris Burden, Dan Graham, Joan Jones, Yoko Ono, Carolee Schneemann, and Paul McCartney. These videos are older and have a grainy quality and have not aged well. Here there is more nudity with one being an equal number of men and women in Speedos and two-piece bathing suits assuming positions as in a synchronized swimming competition which then goes wrong and ends up as pro-wrestling tag-team match. They end up eating fish and a headless chicken.
Another video shows a young Asian woman dressed in a suit only to have a series of men approach her and cut off parts of her clothes while she stares blankly ahead.
Part of the reward of the two shows is that a fairly comprehensive view of performance art from 1964 to the present is all in a single place with a clear invitation for viewers to learn. There can be no question that the genre and the art on display is serious and taken as such by serious people. “…[Performance art] has advanced over the past 50 years,” Winslow said, “to incorporate music, dance, theater, technology, and audience participation to address aesthetic, personal, social, economic and political concerns.”
Delaware Art Museum, 2301 Kentmere Parkway, Wilmington, Delaware 19806 302.571.9590 delart.orga
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