Performance Art: - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Performance Art: [Dada, Cubist, Surrealist]Happenings (1959-1965)Fluxus (1961-1978)

Allan

Kaprow

(Happenings)

Yoko Ono (

Fluxus

)Slide2

Yoko Ono,

“

Snow

Piece,” from Grapefruit, Summer 1963

Allan

Kaprow, 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (detail), 1959, Reuben Gallery, New York. Kaprow is playing the musical instrument.

Performance

Art

Conceptual ArtSlide3

Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich,

Switzerland

Rose Lee Goldberg traces the contemporary tradition of performance art back to the Futurist and Dada artists

before

and during the First World War

.

See: Rose Lee Goldberg’s book

Performance Art from Futurism to the Present,

1979, revised and enlarge in

1988.Slide4

Umberto Bocconi,

Futurist Evening

,

1911

City of Ypres, Belgium, after 4 years of

“

total war

”

World War I, 1914-1918, was the first “total war,” fought with bomber planes that carried the battlefield to

civilians in the cities of Europe.

The

total number of

casualties in World War I

, both military and civilian, were about 37 million: 16 million deaths and 21 million wounded. The total number of deaths includes 9.7 million military personnel and about 6.8 million civilians.

The

Allies lost 5.7 million soldiers and the Central Powers about 4 million.Slide5

Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich,

Switzerland

Hans Arp, in a 1938 essay titled

"

Dadaland

”

recalled

how Dada artists integrated

all

of

the arts during

the first world war.

:

“In Zurich in 1915, losing interest in the slaughterhouse of the world war, we turned to the fine arts. While the thunder of the batteries rumbled in the distance, we pasted, we recited, we versified, we sang with all our soul. We searched for an elementary art that would, we thought, save mankind from the furious folly of these times. We aspired to a new order that might restore the balance between heaven and hell. “…Dada aimed to destroy the reasonable deceptions of man and recover the natural and unreasonable order. Dada wanted to replace the logical nonsense of the men of today by the illogically senseless. That is why we pounded with all our might on the big drum of Dada and trumpeted the praises of unreason.

Dada

gave the Venus de Milo an enema and permitted

Laocoön

and his sons to relieve themselves after thousands of years of struggle with the good sausage python.... Dada is senseless like nature. Dada is for nature and against art.

”

Slide6

Laocoön

, c.

27 BC and 68 AD

Venus de

Milo, c. 130 and 100 BCE

Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich,

Switzerland

Hans Arp, in a 1938 essay titled

"

Dadaland

”

recalled

how Dada artists integrated performance with all of the other art forms during the first world war.

:

“

In Zurich in 1915, losing interest in the slaughterhouse of the world war, we turned to the fine arts. While the thunder of the batteries rumbled in the distance, we pasted, we recited, we versified, we sang with all our soul. We searched for an elementary art that would, we thought, save mankind from the furious folly of these times. We aspired to a new order that might restore the balance between heaven and hell.

“

…Dada aimed to destroy the reasonable deceptions of man and recover the natural and unreasonable order.

Dada

wanted to replace the logical nonsense of the men of today by the illogically senseless. That is why we pounded with all our might on the big drum of Dada and trumpeted the praises of unreason.

Dada gave the Venus de Milo an enema and permitted

Laocoön

and his sons to relieve themselves after thousands of years of struggle with the good sausage python.... Dada is senseless like nature. Dada is for nature and against art.

”

Slide7

Hugo Ball performing his poem

Karawane

, 1:53,

1916

DADA

Umberto

Bocconi

, Futurist Evening, 1911 FUTURISMSlide8

Hugo Ball performing his poem

Karawane

, 1:53,

1916

DADASlide9

Hugo Ball performing his poem

Karawane

, 1:53,

1916

DADA

Costume by Pablo Picasso, for Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau's ballet Parade, Paris, May 1917Slide10

Costume by Pablo Picasso, for Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau's ballet Parade, Paris, May 1917, https://youtu.be/_Chq1Ty0nyE

Costume of

the French Manager for the Ballet “Parade”, 1917Slide11

Buckminster Fuller and Merce Cunningham performing in Erik Satie's play The Ruse of Medusa at Black Mountain College, 1948, SURREALISM

Costume by Pablo Picasso, for Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau's ballet

Parade,

Paris, May 1917, https://youtu.be/_Chq1Ty0nyESlide12

Buckminster Fuller and Merce Cunningham performing in Erik Satie's play The Ruse of Medusa at Black Mountain College, 1948, SURREALISMSlide13

Allan Kaprow, 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (detail), 1959

, Reuben Gallery, New York.

Kaprow

is playing the musical instrument.HappeningsAllan Kaprow first coined the term "happening" in the spring of 1957.

Buckminster Fuller and

Merce Cunningham performing in Erik Satie's play The Ruse of Medusa at Black Mountain College, 1948, SURREALISMSlide14

Kaprow

’

s first

“Happening” was inspired by the experiments at Black Mountain as well as performances that took place in 1957, on a farm belonging to the sculptor George Segal, in New Brunswick, New Jersey.Allan Kaprow, 18 Happenings in 6 Parts

(detail), 1959

, Reuben Gallery, New York. Kaprow is playing the musical instrument.Kaprow preparing for 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (detail), 1959, Reuben Gallery, New YorkSlide15

Entrance to Room 2,

18 Happenings in 6 Parts

(detail), 1959, Reuben Gallery, New York

Allan Kaprow, 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (detail), 1959, Reuben Gallery, New York.

Kaprow is

in the white shirt.Slide16

Reenactment of

18 Happenings in 6 Parts

(detail), 1959, Reuben Gallery, New

YorkAllan Kaprow, 18 Happenings in 6 Parts

(detail), 1959, Reuben Gallery, New York. Kaprow

is in the white shirt.The audience was given programs and three stapled cards, which provided instructions for their participation: “The performance is divided into six parts... Each

part contains three happenings which occur at once. The beginning and end of each will be signaled by a bell.

At

the end of the performance two strokes of the bell will be heard... There will be no applause after each set, but you may applaud after the sixth set if you wish.”Slide17

After the performance at the Reuben Gallery in 1959, Kaprow wrote an essay about “Happenings” that defined their six key features:

The

line between

art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible. The source of themes, materials, actions, and the relationships between them are to be derived from any place or period except from the arts

, their derivatives, and their milieu.

The performance of a Happenings should take place over several widely spaced, sometimes moving and changing locales. Time, which follows closely on space considerations, should be variable and discontinuous.

Happenings

should be

performed only once. …Aside from the fact that repetition is boring to a generation brought up on ideas of spontaneity and originality, to repeat a Happening at this time is to accede to a far more serious matter: compromise of the whole concept of Change.

It

follows that

audiences should be

eliminated entirely. All the elements—people, space, the particular materials and character of the environment, time—can in this way be

integrated.

Allan Kaprow, 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (detail), 1959, Reuben Gallery, New York. Kaprow is in the white shirt.Slide18

Kaprow

,

Yard,

1961Allan Kaprow, 18 Happenings in 6 Parts

(detail), 1959, Reuben Gallery, New York. Kaprow

is in the white shirt.Slide19

Kaprow

,

Yard,

1961

Kaprow

, Photoplay (1970, 2008) reinvented at The Santa Monica Museum of Art on April 12, 2008Slide20

George

Maciunas

,

Fluxus Manifesto, 1963Fluxus

George Maciunas coined the term Fluxus for a proposed magazine in 1961, then wrote this manifesto in 1963.

Kaprow

,

Photoplay (1970, 2008) reinvented at The Santa Monica Museum of Art on April 12, 2008Slide21

George

Maciunas

,

Fluxus Manifesto, 1963Fluxus

Slide22

George

Maciunas

,

Fluxus Manifesto, 1963

Maciunas organized the first Fluxus

event in 1961 at the AG Gallery in New York City and the first Fluxus festivals in Europe in 1962. This is his ping-pong table from 1978, using paddles that he created in 1964. https://youtu.be/2-_VmAzicFs, 0:58Slide23

George

Maciunas

,

Fluxus Manifesto, 1963George Maciunas, Flux Year Box 2

, c. 1966, wood box with title screen-printed on lid, containing works by numerous

Fluxus artists in the form of small objects, Flux boxes, printed matter, and 8mm films with handheld viewer.Slide24

George

Maciunas

,

Fluxus Manifesto, 1963

George Maciunas,

Flux Year Box 2, c. 1966, Wood box with title screen-printed on lid, containing works by numerous Fluxus artists in the form of small objects, Flux boxes, printed matter, and 8mm films with handheld viewer.

A box of matches with label by Ben

Vautier

, 1966Slide25

George

Maciunas

,

Fluxus Manifesto, 1963

Fluxus Artists include:George Maciunas

Nam June PaikYoko OnoJoseph Beuys ….George

Maciunas

,

Flux Year Box 2, c. 1966, Wood box with title screen-printed on lid, containing works by numerous Fluxus artists in the form of small objects, Flux boxes, printed matter, and 8mm films with handheld viewer.Slide26

Yoko Ono and John Lennon of the BeatlesSlide27

originally published in 1964Slide28
Slide29

Yoko Ono,

Sky Machine

, 1966Slide30

Yoko Ono,

Ceiling Painting, 1966

The viewer is invited to climb a white ladder, where, at the top, a magnifying glass, attached by a chain, hangs from a frame on the ceiling. The viewer uses the reading glass to discover a block letter "instruction" beneath the framed sheet of glass-it says "YES."

It

was through this work that Ono met her future husband and longtime collaborator, John Lennon. Slide31

Yoko Ono,

Liverpool

Skyladders

, 2008Slide32

Yoko Ono,

A Hole

to See the Sky Through

, 1971Slide33
Slide34

Yoko Ono,

Telephone

Piece

, 1964+“Please answer the telephone when it rings.”Slide35
Slide36
Slide37
Slide38
Slide39

Yoko Ono,

Bag Piece,

1964, text from MoMA, 2015Slide40

Yoko Ono,

Cut Piece,

1965

8:03Yoko Ono,

Bag Piece, 1964Slide41

Yoko Ono,

“

Snow

Piece,” from Grapefruit, Summer 1963Slide42

Yoko Ono,

“

Snow

Piece,” from Grapefruit, Summer 1963