Some Relations Between Conceptual and Performance Art, Frazer
-
Upload
sabiha-farhat -
Category
Documents
-
view
226 -
download
4
Transcript of Some Relations Between Conceptual and Performance Art, Frazer
8/22/2019 Some Relations Between Conceptual and Performance Art, Frazer
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/some-relations-between-conceptual-and-performance-art-frazer 1/6
Some Relations between Conceptual and Performance ArtAuthor(s): Frazer WardSource: Art Journal, Vol. 56, No. 4, Performance Art: (Some) Theory and (Selected) Practice atthe End of This Century (Winter, 1997), pp. 36-40
Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777718 .
Accessed: 14/06/2013 08:01
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Journal.
http://www.jstor.org
8/22/2019 Some Relations Between Conceptual and Performance Art, Frazer
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/some-relations-between-conceptual-and-performance-art-frazer 2/6
Some Relationsbetween
Conceptualn d Performancer t
Frazer Ward
I reallybelieve n having projectswhich infact can't be car-
ried out, or which are so simple that anyone could work
them out. I once madefour spots on the map of Holland,
withoutknowingwheretheywere. ThenIfound out how to
get there and went to theplace and took a snapshot.Quite36 stupid.Anybodycan do that. -Jan Dibbetsl
onceptual art's factions have frequently been at
odds, usually over definitions and often after the
fact. For the purposesof furtherargument,Concep-tual art mightbe considered as workthat emphasizedthe
underlying conditions of aesthetic experience: Languagewas seen as foremostamong hese conditions.Material orm
and sensoryperceptionwere madesecondary o analysesof
their discursive and institutionalframes. Performanceart,
on the other hand, seems relatively straightforwardto
define,"as a formof art thathappensat a particular ime ina particularplace where the artistengages in some sort of
activity, usually before an audience. The main difference
between performance art and other modes of visual art
practice, such as painting, photography,and sculpture, is
that it is a temporalevent or action."2
In the late 1960s and early 1970s there was consid-
erable overlap between these categories.3 Subsequently,
however, t has become a commonplaceto think of perfor-mance artin oppositionto Conceptualart'scritical investi-
gationof the status, and presence, of objects, and to think
of it as treatingbodily presence in a relatively unproblem-
atic way. In what follows, I consider two worksof art, the
first of which, Ian Burn's MirrorPiece (1967), might be
described as typically Conceptual. The second, Vito
Acconci's Step Piece (1970), might better be seen as an
ambiguously Conceptual piece of performance art. The
juxtapositionhelps to reveal the ambiguityimportedinto
the category of the Conceptual with elements of perfor-
mance, which in turn makes it untenable to view perfor-mance art as the bodily counter to a linguistic paradigmwithin a particularmoment of avant-gardehistory.Rather,
some performance art may be seen to have challengedsome of the limitations of Conceptualart, particularly ts
notion of rationality,but from within a broadly Conceptualframework.In this account, Conceptualand performanceart are engagedin a continuingdialogue,sometimes a con-
versation,sometimes an argument.Where Conceptual art detailed relations between
aesthetic productionand its institutional conditions, per-formancesby artists including Acconci and Chris Burden
examinedthe effects of these relations on subjectivity.The
introductionof their ownbodies as termsin this set of rela-
tions has been seen to havehad a critical effect by pointingto the contingent, social construction of subjectivity. Or
else its effect has been seen in the visceral transgressionof
social and aesthetic norms. The former veers toward the
morerationalistic,Conceptualend of performanceart, the
latter toward its obsessional end. It is possible to argue,
instead, that their work shares a complex ambivalencetoward he uncertain determinationsof subjectivitywithin
the institutionalframeof art, as it takes its place, in turn,
in a widerpublic sphere.Bum's unambiguouslyConceptualMirrorPiece con-
sists of thirteentyped pages of notes and diagrams, ramed
and coveredwithglass, and an ordinary, ectangularmirror,
similarly framed(fig. 1). The notes include the following
statement,typicallyConceptual n its abandonmentof aes-
thetic authority:"I certifythatI consider this work s in no
way unique and mightbe reproducedat any time or place
by myselforanyotherperson(eitheractingon mybehalfor
acting independently)."4 Further, the notes explain the
work(and themselves) in termsof the interactionbetween
the spectator'srecognitionof the mirror'snormal function
andits "intentional"unction as art,referringo the displayof the mirrorwith the notes and diagramsas a "concept":"This concept becomes a framework or the mirroras art
and aims at gettingthe spectator'sseeing'to cohereagainsta particularbackgroundof inferredknowledge.The context
of roomorgalleryno longerservesto identifythe functionof
the mirror;he intention s built into the work."5
WINTER1997
This content downloaded from 202.41.10.30 on Fri, 14 Jun 2013 08:01:50 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
8/22/2019 Some Relations Between Conceptual and Performance Art, Frazer
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/some-relations-between-conceptual-and-performance-art-frazer 3/6
FIG. I lan Burn,MirrorPiece, 1967,
acrylic,mirror,lass,woodframe,diagrams, nd notesinplastic leeve
and a 13-pageprintedext book.Art
Galleryf WesternAustralia,88/108.
This may or may not be saved from a didacticism
alien to Duchamp,whose ready-madesprovidedthe model
for the work,by anyhumor n the faux-bureaucrateseof the
writing. But it serves to illustrate a problem that Mel
Bochneruses to explain whyhe does not like the term Con-
ceptualart. That is, it is not entirely clear what "concept"means here, and it runs the risk of being confused with
"intention."6The issue that Burn's work skates around is
that it is one thing for a work explicitly to reveal its"ideationalpremise,"but another or artistssimply to state
their intentions(whichapartfromanythingelse suggests a
weak readingof Duchamp).7Much Conceptualart of this
kindrestedon a somewhatnaive, overlyschematic separa-tion of the conceptualand the perceptual,to establish the
priorityof the linguistic overthe visual.8
Acconci'sperformance,StepPiece (fig. 2), is the first
work in UrsulaMeyer'santhologyof documentsby artists,
ConceptualArt 1972).The"project"s describedas follows:
An eighteen-inchstool is set up in my apartmentand used
as a step. Each morning,during the designated months,Istep up and down the stool at the rate of thirty steps a
minute;each morning, the activity lasts as long as I can
perform t withoutstopping.... Announcements re sent to
thepublic,who can see the activityperformed,n my apart-
ment,any timeduringtheperformance-months.9
There is a kind of obsessionally comic quality to this that
acts as a corrective to the rationalist terms of much Con-
ceptualart(though t mightbe said to conform o its "indis-
criminateempiricism").0lSimilarly,Rosalind Krauss has
arguedof Sol LeWitt(one of the godfathersof Conceptual
art),thatwhile his repetitivegeometricwork is often taken
to be a coolly analytical representationof the rationalityof
Mind(in a waythatsmuggles in a Cartesian,humanist sub-
ject), it in fact "provides one with an experience that is
obsessional in kind.""l
While the rationalismof Conceptualart might have
been intended by a number of its practitionersto demysti-
fy the conditions and the languageof aesthetic experience,
so that it became less elitist, both Krauss and GregoryBattcock, introducinghis Idea Art (1973), a collection of
critics' and artists' writings on Conceptual art, note the
hostility of audiences, particularly"nonart"audiences, to
Conceptual art.12 Perhaps this was because, as Harold
Rosenberg suggested, "to qualify as a member of the art
public, an individual must be tuned to the appropriatever-
bal reverberationsof objects in artgalleries, and his recep-tive mechanismmust be constantly adjustedto oscillate to
new vocabularies.")13This points to the weakness of Con-
ceptual art'snotionsof boththe public-the one concept it
did not approachempirically (or else it would have real-
ized that the public needed betterpersuasionto give up its
aesthetic pleasure, which was often already difficult
enough)-and, concomitantly,of rationality,which it failed
to consider in communicative erms.Hence JosephKosuth,
whose lack of concernwithpublic communications palpa-ble: "it is nearly impossible to discuss art in generalterms
without alkingin tautologies,"and "art ndeed exists forits
ownsake."14
Even in 1970 Acconci was at least implicitlyaddress-
ing these problems. Step Piece is typically Conceptual,inasmuch as it is, or documents, the execution of a verbal
ART JOURNAL
37
This content downloaded from 202.41.10.30 on Fri, 14 Jun 2013 08:01:50 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
8/22/2019 Some Relations Between Conceptual and Performance Art, Frazer
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/some-relations-between-conceptual-and-performance-art-frazer 4/6
plan. At first glance, that is, whateverperceptual experi-ence the work provides is subject to a prior, conceptual
scheme, the linguistic formulationof which is part of the
work. In this sense it may participate in what Kosuth
regardsas the constitutive distinction of Conceptualart,
which is that it inquires into the foundations of the very
concept of art, as against the more familiar modernist
inquiriesinto specific media.15However,StepPiece neither
negates nor generalizes the public. Its demystifyingmoveagainstthe usual conditions of art is to collapse the public
space of exhibition onto the supposedly private space of
production,which in this case is not even the studio but
Acconci's home (suggesting that these are intertwined),and to extend exhibition back outside, as it were, by dis-
tributing monthly "progressreports" o the "artpublic."'6If it is not exactly clear who constituted the "artpublic,"what is clear is that Acconci selected a relatively specific
group of people as the public for this work. That is, the
work does not pretend to a generalized communicative
38 function,and mighteven be seen to parody he pretensionsof some other Conceptual art in this regard. (Certainly,
anybody might do that, but not everyonewas expected to
be interested.)At the same time, while the work s in its ownslight-
ly loony way rational, as a study of cause and effect, it
exceeds the abstract rationalityof much Conceptualism.Bochner observes that "there is no art that does not bear
some burden of physicality. To deny it is to descend to
irony."17By 1970 Acconci had outstripped many of his
Conceptual contemporaries in recognizing this. In Step
Piece, rationality itself is intimately connected with
Acconci's own physicality:the work is in parta record ofchanges in Acconci'sphysical status. Here is a post-Carte-sian bindingof abstractrationalityand experience,or con-
ceptualandperceptual,andpublic andprivate,in the form
of the site-specific developmentof a subject-"I can build
myself into the space as I build myself up."18The decep-
tively comic work s the process and recordof this binding.What is crucial to StepPiece, and what makes it so
ambiguouslyConceptual, s the complicationof a Concep-tual scheme with an element of performance withall the
confusion that enters into that term, given its setting in
Acconci's apartmentand its mediated presentation).In a
discussion in Octoberof the currentreceptionof the art ofthe 1960s, BenjaminBuchloh, who has written one of the
more authoritativeaccounts of Conceptualart, largely in
termsof the "linguistic paradigm,"19bservesof arthistoryabout the 1960s (including his own): "the opposition is
upheld between a victorious paradigmof Conceptualism,whichrepresses,excludes, denigratesall otherpractices-which at that moment are of performance,of the body."20Reflection on performance art in the vein of Step Piece
mightalreadyraise the questionof how victorious the Con-
ceptual paradigm actually was, but Buchloh points to a
more general problemfor art history:How to account for
and find relationsbetween the variousartisticpractices in
a period(especially a periodwithinrelativelyrecent mem-
ory,which may become historical against the grainof the
historian'sexperienceof it), when the implicationsof those
practices are takenup in subsequentart in ways that were
not predicted or predictable. Consider, for instance, a
recent turn to "thebody"in variousguises, which does notseem to assume the victoryof a Conceptualismprincipallyconcerned with linguistic conditions.
More specifically, there is the problem of how to
account for any relations between Conceptualand perfor-mance art. This difficultyis compoundedbecause perfor-mance art was not a "movement," in the way that
Minimalism or Conceptualism were, whatever attemptshave been made to situate it as one. Rather,performancehas surfaced and disappeared throughoutthe twentieth
century as a kind of undercurrent,periodically bubbling
up within-or in some relation to-various avant-gardemovements: the Soviet avant-gardes,Futurism,Dada, the
Bauhaus, neo-Dada, Fluxus, Pop, Minimalism, perhapseven AbstractExpressionism f we consider the arena-like
quality of Jackson Pollock's painting on canvases rolled
out on the studio floor.In works not only by Acconci, but
by ChrisBurden,JanDibbets, Dan Graham,DouglasHue-
bler, Bruce Nauman,Dennis Oppenheim,HannahWilke,
and even Daniel Buren (e.g., his Sandwichmen [1968]),and others, it certainlysurfacedin a close relationto Con-
ceptualart-as much as it mighthave surfacedin the work
of otherartists,againstConceptualism.
In this connectionit is interestingto note differencesamongthe most important,more or less contemporaneous
anthologies about Conceptualart. Meyer's ConceptualArt
includes worksby Acconci, Buren,Dibbets, Graham,Hue-
bler, Nauman and Oppenheim,as well as Rosemarie Cas-
toro and BernarVenet,all of which involve some element
of performance,withoutremarkingupon or distinguishingit within Conceptualart as a whole. Similarly, Lucy Lip-
pard'sSix Years 1973) deliberately"muddies the waters,"
documenting"thewhole headyscene" that was the context
for Conceptualart.21 n Battcock's Idea Art, on the other
hand, the most extended references to performanceare by
RobertHughes, who pillories Herman Nitsch'sneo-rituals
and, in what is now a well-known error, Rudolf
Schwarzkogler's photographic "actions" (which Hughesmistookfor self-mutilations),and is sarcastic about Char-
lotte Moormanplaying the cello topless.22The differences
betweenthese collections suggest thateven in the moment
of Conceptualism (which was evidently not only its
moment),from the mid-1960s to early 1970s, the place of
performancewas uncertain.23
The October discussion follows Buchloh's remark
WINTER 1997
This content downloaded from 202.41.10.30 on Fri, 14 Jun 2013 08:01:50 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
8/22/2019 Some Relations Between Conceptual and Performance Art, Frazer
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/some-relations-between-conceptual-and-performance-art-frazer 5/6
FIG. 2 Vito Acconci, Step Piece,
February,April,July,November
1970, 8 A.M. each day, 102
ChristopherStreet, New York.
into a brief discussion of how art history is written, in
which RosalindKrauss asks:
Whatsense does it make, if you are a historian writingaboutthe emergenceof the linguisticparadigm Conceptualart was mobilizing,to write about all the counter-paradig-matic practices as well? Because then you have to write
about Gottund die Welt. Can we say that LyndaBenglis'swork was made specifically counter to Joseph Kosuth? I
thinknot.24
Acconci'sStepPiece suggests that there may be no neces-saryoppositionbetweenConceptualandperformance rt. It
is not a questionof paradigmaticand counter-paradigmatic
practices,but at least in certaininstances of practices that
were closely intertwined.For example, there are worksbyartists as different as Acconci, Chris Burden, and Bruce
Naumanthat mightusually be consideredmore closely in
relation to performanceart, which nevertheless draw on
important lements of "purely"Conceptualpractice.Even Burden'sShoot(1971), in which he arranged o
be shot in the armby a friend with a .22 gauge rifle, and
which at first glance seems emphatically counter to the
rationalanalyses of Conceptualism, has in commonwith
Conceptualismthe fact that it is the (painfully)empirical
workingthroughof a predeterminedplan. Not only that,but it now exists primarily as documentation (and what
Burden refers to as "relics"),so that its materialexistence,as with much performanceart, somewhat resembles the
characteristic orms of Conceptualart.
In the late 1960s Naumanmade works in the formof
sets of instructions-"Drill a hole about a mile into the
earth anddropa microphone o withina few feet of the bot-
tom"25-and furtherdemonstratedan interest in the con-
textualizingfunctionof languagein photographsand video
works, focusing on the body but set off by explanatoryor
punning titles. Art Makeup(1967-68) is a series of four
16mmfilms of Nauman,facing the camera directly, apply-
ing four different colors of what appears to be theatrical
makeup to his upper body, face, and arms. The title sug-
gests that this process of exposure,disguise, and represen-tation is how "artists"are "madeup."
WhatI suggest is that in writingourhistories of six-
ties art, we might see workslike Acconci's StepPiece and
Burden's Shoot as conducting a critique, from within abroadly Conceptual framework, of the positivist, even
enlighteningclaims made for rationality n the Conceptualart that denied its "burdenof physicality."The introduc-
tion of elements of performance nto that broadframework
addresses the weakness of Conceptualnotions of the pub-lic and of rationality,even if it does so in a negativelycrit-
ical manner(it is not as if Acconci or Burdenprovidedus
with models of a functioningpublic sphere).
Conceptualart undertookthe removal of traditional
elements of aesthetic expression from art. Empiricist sys-tems
(frequentlywith the
arbitraryqualityof the
"project"ofStep Piece) replacedmoretraditionallywroughtmodesof
expression and formalmastery.Conceptualism'spresenta-tion of its relatively flimsy bits and pieces, as art, re-per-
formed, parodically, the institutional valorization of art.
However,despite the rationalist,democratizinggroundson
which it soughtto demystifyaesthetic experience and mas-
tery("Anybodycan do that"), t maintainedthe abstraction
of content crucial to the high modernist art that had until
then been institutionally valorized (and remains so). If
modernistpaintingwasjust aboutpainting,Conceptualart
wasjust about art. In this way, it maintainedthe somewhat
ART JOURNAL
39
This content downloaded from 202.41.10.30 on Fri, 14 Jun 2013 08:01:50 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
8/22/2019 Some Relations Between Conceptual and Performance Art, Frazer
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/some-relations-between-conceptual-and-performance-art-frazer 6/6
elitist disembodiment of its own subject, and its ratio
ism remainedabstract,andonly abstractlycommunical
Step Piece and Shoot, and other works that im
performanceinto a Conceptual frame, model a diffe
version of the subject of aesthetic experience. As agathe putatively democraticsubject of linguistic rationm
that Conceptualism proffers, they provide a model of
subjectfor whomthe languageof rationalityhas intima
physical effects, effects that may go beyond Accorhomespun, quirky anticipation of the gym craze to
potentially dire consequences of the pathologicalem]cism of Shoot(made,it mightbe worthrecalling, duringVietnamWar).Rationalismalone, in this context, guatees nothingto aesthetic experience.
In conjunctionwith this, if these works expressdesire for an emphatickind of embodimentthat could
groundthe subject of Conceptualreason, their media
and perhaps undecidable status as performancesat c
confounds that desire. If Conceptualart is only abstra
40 communicative, these works are altogether ambiva
about the possibility of communicative action, in athat points up some of Conceptualism's pretensil
Despite the artist'spresence in a particularplace at a
ticulartime, they are siteless in a way quite different f
Conceptual art's ethereal idealism ("Anybody car
that"),or from Seth Siegelaub'scatalogue-as-exhibitioFor in each case, the act of embodiment,the performa]is simultaneous with its own representation, as puannouncement or photographic record. The event ta
place in a private space (Acconci'sapartment, he spacwhich Burden invited a small group of people), but
becomes the site ofpublicity
in theprocess
ofrepresetion. For us to be able to write art histories of it, sul
quently,that moment of embodimentin which the prirealm is shot through with publicity also becomes
moment of the reproduction of Acconci or Burden
"Acconci" or "Burden")as "artist."It mightbe sugge,that in orderto speak, the artist is not only trappedbu
go in art,however uncomfortablea place that is, and h
ever much this or that account of Conceptualism m
want to explain it away.
Notes
1. "Dibbets,"in ConceptualArt, ed. Ursula Meyer (New York:Dutton, 1
121.
2. Anne Marsh, Body and Self: Performance Art in Australia (MelboOxfordUniversity Press, 1993), 7. But this definitiondoes not go withoutco
cation or contest, either. The status of documentation, especially photogr;
documentation, is an issue in discussions of performance art, and it ten
resolve into twoopposed positions. Either you had to be there, so that the sin
neous presence of performerand audience was definitive, or you did not, an
event was as much a pretext for its documentationas anything else. For a s
version of the former,see C. Carr'sevocations of her experiences of perform,from the late 1970s into the 1990s in On Edge: Performance at the End C
TwentiethCentury Hanover,N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, 1993). Forth
ter, Vito Acconci has reflected on the "world"of performanceart: "it turned
be after all only visual, the action mightas well have been a picture (that's h
it was going to be historically preserved anyway).""Performanceafter the I
nal- New Observations,no. 95 (May-June 1993): 31. As I will argue, it is clear that in
tive. some performance art, the simultaneous reproduction of the work and its subse-quent distributionwere integral to it, so that the relation between the event and its
port documentation must at least be allowed to remain in tension. It seems preferableat
rent the very least to let the uncertain status of the photographs do some work. For
t instance, what can be gatheredfromthe photographs hatmightnothave been evi-
dent on the spot?
ality 3. See, for example, Lizzie Borden, "Three Modes of Conceptual Art,"Artfo-
the rum 10, no. 10 (June 1972): 68-71. Borden's second mode "locates the body in
space for demonstration or performance,"69. Further examples are discussed
ltely below.
lCi'S4. Ian Burn, Minimal-Conceptual Work, 1965-1970, exh. cat. (Perth: Art
Galleryof WesternAustralia, 1992), 74.the 5. Ibid.
ri- 6. Mel Bochner, "Excerpts from Speculation (1967-1970)," in Meyer, Concep-tual Art,50. See also Rosalind Krauss,"Sense and Sensibility: Reflectionson Post
the '60s Sculpture,"Artforum12, no. 3 (November1973): 43-53.
ran- 7. Meyer, introduction to ConceptualArt, viii. In fact, there is tension within
Conceptual art, between artists who emphasize intention and those who say, like
Jan Dibbets, "anybody can do that," the effect of which is to suggest that the
the democratizingeffect of Conceptualism is to allow anybodyto have the same inten-
notions as Conceptual artists, an opportunity or which anybody would no doubt be
deeply grateful.Ition 8. See, for example, Ian Burn and Mel Ramsden, "The Role of Language":
"Whatever attitude we have to seeing may depend very much on the kind of dis-
tinctions we typicallyuse in language, and in fact on the wayin general that we set
ICtly out to describe our visual experiences. It may mean that, to establish any new
lent modes or nuances of 'seeing,' the mode (orsuch conditions as will allow for it) must
first be established in anappropriate anguage."
InArtinTheory,
1900-1990: An
way Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Oxford:
nHS. Blackwell, 1993), 881. I do not mean to be dismissive of Bur's MirrorPiece, butto point to the confusion over "concept." Bur retained from Minimalism an inter-
par- est in the phenomenological, which mightbe addressed in this case via the ques-
From tion of what is reflected n the mirror n its different contexts.
i do 9. Quoted in Meyer, ConceptualArt, 3.10. VictorBurgin, "SituationalAesthetics," in Meyer, ConceptualArt,87.
)n.2 11. Rosalind Krauss, "LeWitt in Progress," in The Originalityof the Avant-
Gardeand OtherModernistMyths(Cambridge,Mass.: MITPress, 1986), 252.
12. GregoryBattcock, ed., introduction to Idea Art:A CriticalAnthology(Newblic York:Dutton, 1973).
ikes 13. Harold Rosenberg, "Art and Words," n Battcock, Idea Art, 153-54.14. JosephKosuth,"ArtafterPhilosophy, andII," n Battcock, deaArt,83, 91.
>e o 15.Ibid.,93.
this 16. Kate Linker, VitoAcconci (New York:Rizzoli, 1994), 24.17. Bochner, "ExcerptsfromSpeculation," 57.
18. Acconci, "StepPiece,"Avalanche, no. 6 (special issue: Vito Acconci) (Fallbse- 1972):1.
19. Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, "ConceptualArt, 1962-1969," October,no. 55e
(Winter1990): 105-43.
the 20. "The Reception of the Sixties," roundtable discussion, October,no. 69
(or (Summer 1994): 18.21. Lucy Lippard, "Escape Attempts," foreword to the reissue of Six Years
sted (1973; Berkeley: Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1997), vii.
t et 22. Robert Hughes, "The Decline and Fall of the Avant-Garde," n Battcock,Idea Art. Hughes fell thoroughly or the most superficial opposition between Con-
lOW- ceptual and performance art: "If Conceptual Art represents pedagogy and stale
ight metaphysics at the end of their tether, Body Art is the last rictus of Expression-
ism," 194.
23. By 1992, its historical status seemed to have been decided, at least in
some quarters, if that compendium of avant-gardism, Charles Harrison and Paul
Wood'sArt in Theory, s anything to go by. While there are texts by Joseph Beuys
972), and Allan Kaprow, here is no mention of performance, et alone performanceart.
(Perhaps it was assumed that performanceart was atheoretical.) This omission hasurne: subsequently been addressed in Theoriesand Documentsof ContemporaryArt,ed.
mpli- Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz (Berkeley: Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1996).
aphic 24. "TheReception of the Sixties," 19.
ids to 25. "Nauman," n Meyer, ConceptualArt, 187.
nulta- 26. Seth Siegelaub, "On Exhibitions and the World at Large,"in Battcock,
id the Idea Art.
FRAZER WARD is a Ph.D. candidate in art history at
Cornell University.His dissertation is on performanceart
and the public sphere.
WINTER 1997
This content downloaded from 202.41.10.30 on Fri, 14 Jun 2013 08:01:50 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions