Performance Art

Question 1

Answer 1

Yves Klein, Anthropometries of the Blue Period, 1960

leader of “New Realism”- argued painting ended with AbEx- now art must come from real world; act of creating/process is art itself

directs 3 models covered in blue paint, pressed bodies against sheets of paper to musical accompaniment of 20-piece orchestra playing single note

art making as gestural act but final work as imprint of artist/model

comment on pretentiousness of Pollock; also mocking Formalism- woman as subject and object of painting (academic art= female nude)

Question 2

Answer 2

Carolee Schneemann, Meat Joy, 1964

early performance artist

radical feminist performance- 8 men & women undress each other, dance, roll around mixture of raw fish, sausages, bloody chickens, wet paint, scraps of paper

rubbing all over bodies meant to remind one of free love orgies of sexual liberation 1960s, however, turns from erotic to disgusting

purpose: force audience to smell, taste, feel viscerally the body and its fluids- should disgust you in same way female objectification should disgust

control taken from audience, made to feel uncomfortable, like Manet’s Olympia