Yet another blog... about Performance Art

Performance art is vague, painfully vague, but therein lay the point. The movements that helped to bring performance art into the spotlight, Fluxus, Gutai, Nouveau Realism, and Dada are all about breaking the traditional confines of how we perceive art and breaking away from influences to portray the artistic idea in its pure form. This way of thinking challenges how we regard art by its lack of guidelines. People who embrace it are those who craving for newer ways to express the ideas in their heads, free from the long history of art that can be, at times, a weight around our necks. Art is a free form, and the ways in which to express it are limitless.
Artists during the first half of the 20th century came together to break the bonds of what they considered as “commercialized art”. They functioned as groups in different areas of artistic thinking, artists, composers, writers, and designers to become the international network known as Fluxus. The inventors of this movement took its name from Latin, meaning, “to flow” and indeed it seems to be justly named. The network “flows” together by accepting the artistic differences among the participants so that “Intermedia” became a phrase commonly used in describing it.
Another interesting group that helped shape the thought process involved with performance art is Gutai, a movement in Japan that was started by Jiro Yoshihara in 1954. This movement was preoccupied with the idea of the “beauty that arises when things become decayed or damaged”. Yoshihara wrote a manifesto that explained that damage or destruction is “celebrated” as a way of revealing the inner “life” of an object.

"Yet what is interesting in this respect is the novel beauty to be found in works of art and architecture of the past which have changed their appearance due to the damage of time or destruction by disasters in the course of the centuries. This is described as the beauty of decay, but is it not perhaps that beauty which material assumes when it is freed from artificial make-up and reveals its original characteristics? The fact that the ruins receive us warmly and kindly after all, and that they attract us with their cracks and flaking surfaces, could this not really be a sign of the material taking revenge, having recaptured its original life?...."
- Jiro Yoshihara

This was of thinking is fascinating. I’m glad for the sharp minds that took the time to challenge what was the norm and create a way for people to express their art in more ways. Nouveau Realism and Dada are all about breaking the mold and the ability to think freely about their ideas. It’s a challenge, in my opinion, to other artists. Take the road that’s less traveled, be bold and daring about your thinking. So many of us try to hide behind what is normal. We limit ourselves with what we’ve already seen or the fears we have over the reaction of our work might be. I know that I have a fear of how my viewers will react, but that’s why I’m here. The reason I’m studying art in the first place is, even more so than gathering skills, is to learn how to be fresh in how I approach my ideas and expressing them without any hesitancy.



References:
- Françoise Bonnefoy; Sarah Clément; Isabelle Sauvage; Galerie nationale du jeu de paume (France). Gutai (Paris : Galerie nationale du jeu de paume : Réunion des musées nationaux, 1999) ISBN 2908901684 9782908901689
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutai_group
- O'Dell, Kathy (Spring 1997). "Fluxus Feminus". The Drama Review 41 (1): 43–60. ISSN 10542043. Retrieved on 2007-05-05.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus