Performance art landmarks

  Futurists. 1913. La Serata Futurista, Teatro Verdi in Florence. Massive publicity, huge crowd. Fillipo Tomasso Marinetti – bald headed, twirly moustached - hurls insults at the crowd. The crowd throw rotten fruit at him. There are manifestos - they loved a manifesto, those Futurists – and experimental poetry.

    There is a play called 'there is no dog’ in which the only action is a dog walking across the stage. The Futurists want to break the mould of complacent middle-class theatre goers, drawing on the spirit of Variety theatre, aiming to produce art which is modern, forward looking, dynamic, kinetic.

Publicity… and provocation.

    Publicity is key, before and after the event. Which is one of many. And provocation. Audience members were glued to their seats. The organisers sold the same seats to ten different customers, all to create more chaos, more outrage. This is before Mussolini gained power, but this is the roots of Fascism.

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  Yves Klein. Anthropometries of the Blue Period, Paris 1960. where he used nude models as 'living brudhes' to create imprints of their bodies in his trademark YK Blue aint, on large sheets of paper. This performance was accompanied by a live orchestra playing Klein's 'Monotone Symphony' a single note played for 20 minutes

followed by 20 minutes of silence.

   Blurring the boundaries between art forms. Klein's use of the human body as a tool for creating art blurred the lines between performance and visual art.

   Yoko Ono, Cut Piece. Kyoto Japan, 1964. Ono sat on stage with a pair of scissors in front of her, inviting audience members to come up and cut pieces of her clothing. This level of audience interaction was groundbreaking and challenged traditional boundaries between artist and spectator. Objectification and power dynamics. She presented herself as a passive object raising questions about female objectification in art, and also about the power dynamics between the artist and the audience.

   Carolee Schneeman, Interior Scroll. East Hampton 1975. Standing on a table, she stripped, and recited from her book Cezanne, she was a great painter, then pulled a scroll from her vagi...a and read it out. A critique of the male dominated art world.

   When asked why she showed herself naked, she replied: “I do not show my body, Iam being my body”. The power of the body, and the importance of documenting. Schneemann's use of her body as both the medium and the message was groundbreaking and has had

a lasting impact on the field of performance art. She documented everything she did (Barbican exhibition 2023), aware of the ephemeral nature of performance art.

   Marina Abramovic, The Artist is Present. New York 2010. Audiences were invited to sit opposite her and look into her eyes, without speaking. She did this for 736 hours over 3 months. Ulay, her former art partner, turned up unexpectedly. Or was it? They hadn’t seen each other for 20 years, since the Great Wall of China piece in which

they walked from opposite ends and met in the middle to say goodbye. They had spent much of the 70s and 80s tied together, breathing into each others’ mouths, screaming and aiming loaded crossbows at each other. You might call it an intense relationship.

Duration, endurance and emotional impact.

  Pussy Riot. Punk Prayer, Moscow 2012. Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.

Highlighting Russian Orthodox Church’s support of the the regime.

   Global reach, high stakes. Several of the performers are jailed. Highlighted the intersection of art and political activism. The trial and sentencing of Pussy Riot members underscored the importance of artistic freedom and the dangers of censorship.

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-A. Leith