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The Leveling Up of Performance Art in the 2 0 th Century Cliona Stack

Murray Krieger's Arts on the Level: The Fallofthe Elite Object is a collection ofJohn C. Hodges Lectures, delivered in October 1979, which ac- count for the tendency toward leveling the arts in the 2 0th century. In the first lecture, "The Precious Object: Fetish as Aesthetic," Krieger posits, "what are the consequences to the arts-and to criticism of the arts-of contemporary efforts to level them, to make all artistic productions level with one another, to reduce them all to a dead level?"' The term "level," which is a visually self- reinforcing word, renders art dead as it indicates a flattening of creativity, a stunting the upward inclination of the arts, and imposition of the so-called "horror of the horizontal."'2 Krieger notes that with the rise of Kantian theory and museum culture, the object gained both autonomy and intrinsic value. A canon of masterworks was established and, more importantly, assessed prima- rily in terms of monetary worth. Aesthetics were therefore tied to the material- ity of the object, and thus emerged the fetish of the elite object, the secular 'religion' of the plastic arts, and the market culture of art in general. Crucial to

the leveling of the arts, then, is the emergence of anti-elitist critical theory. Anti-elitist doctrine necessitated the devaluation of the object, the privileging of objects of everyday life, and nondiscriminatory approach to art. In the extreme, anti-elitism provided for a non-objective art. Performance art was in- volved in this anti-elite art movement and, in attempting to rise to the level of the art object, ultimately contributed to the fall ofthe elite object.

Throughout much of the history of art, performance was supplemen- tal to actual art objects or involved in a working out of art objects. RoseLee Goldberg cites many early examples of performance during the Renaissance,

such as Leonardo da Vinci's 1490 pageant Paradiso,Polidoro da Carvaggio's 1589 mock naval battle, and Gian Lorenzo Bernini's stage performances, such as the 1638 L'Inondazione? Similarly, artists such as Jackson Pollock inte- grated performance into the creation oftheir art objects, allowing the process to be integrally tied to certain types of action. In Pollock's case, this process resulted in his so-called actionpaintings.Nevertheless, performance art as it

is commonly known today (the imprecise, boundless art of performer, time, space and audience) rose out of anti-elitist theories and the conceptual art movement, gaining tremendous momentum in the 1960s and 1970s. Preceding art movements such as Futurism, Constructivism, Dadaism and Surrealism affirmed that, "The gesture for us will no longer be a fixed moment of universal dynamism: it will be decisively the dynamic sensation made eternal." 4 Because these movements accommodated dynamism (movement), sensation (the body), and the eternal within their theory, these movements also allowed the idea to enter into the art world as an art object in its own right. Performance art emerged from this idea,which was greatly privileged over the traditional art object (i.e. painting, sculpture, etc.) as artists increasingly wanted to move away from elite objects toward non-material aspects of art. The theory es- poused by such artists was that to deny the material art object was to deny museum culture ofthe art world and, ultimately, to deny elitism. Performance art naturally came to the fore of this movement as it was thought to embrace two types of immateriality, both immateriality ofobject and of economy. Perfor- mance art was bound to the body and the moment and also aspired to be a non- commercial art, or an art that could not be bought or sold.

In order to truly overcome the traditional art object, however, perfor- mance art first needed to level up to or become an art object itself. This process was similar to the "materialization" of literary works that Krieger speaks of in Arts on the Level. In his analysis of the leveling of literature, Krieger notes that critics began to treat literary works as material objects and, more importantly, as secondary rather than primary objects. As with the plastic arts, the move- ment away from the elite object rendered all literary works flat, horizontal, equal. The trend prevented traditional bodies of literary criticism to exist in their own right and instead brought all works under the same general body of 'literature.' Krieger further notes that this move also privileged the critic's word over the literature itself or, in his own terms, that this move allowed the formerly secondary text (criticism) to overtake the formerly primary text (i.e. the poem). In essence, established hierarchies and values of literary criticism were inverted in the leveling process.

With 2 0 th century art criticism, established hierarchies and values were similarly overturned. The art object, previously elite and supreme in the art world, was supplanted by the non-objective art object or the idea. This reversal denied the necessity of an art object, debased the traditional art object and blurred the definition of art, allowing nearly anything to enter into the realm ofthe art world as an art object. The everyday was permissible, heralding pieces such as Piero Manzoni's Merda d'artistaand Marcel Duchamp's Bi- cycle Wheel and Fountain. Such artists questioned the boundaries between art and life by allowing not only the found and the everyday to enter the museum as art but, in the case ofMerda d'artista,allowing even human excre-

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ment to enter the museum as art. This lark revealed the artist's blatant rejection of the elite art object. It also seems in many ways to have been a tremendous joke on the art world and its market culture. In performance art, the ideaor concept was certainly preeminent and the traditional art object was aban- doned. Therefore, the artist was permitted to confer the status of the art object onto another non-traditional medium: the artist's self Some artists even el- evated this non-traditional medium by referring to their performances as 'liv- ing' rather than 'dead' painting (e.g. Stephen Taylor Woodrow's The Living Paintings,1986, Raymond O'Daly's The ConversionofPostModernism, 1986, or Miranda Payne's Saint Gargoyle, 1986). This assertion is clearly critical of traditional art objects and represents the cyclical changes in artistic theory that Krieger outlines. In this way, the statement is also an attempt to raze the traditional art object, to knock it and its supportive theories down from elite

status while making a spot for the idea in the art world. As Goldberg explains, performance,

implied the experienceoftime, space and material rather than their representation in the form of objects, and the body became the most direct medium of expression. Performance was therefore an ideal means to materialize art concepts and as such was the prac- tice corresponding to many of those theories.'

In this attempt to go "beyond" traditional art, the artist attempted to elevateperformanceartastheartofideasratherthanmaterials. Performance artists therefore devalued the long-established art object of the old masters and overwhelmingly privileged the artist in a new extreme: the artist as both creator of art object and the art object itself. This change was anticipated by Italian poet and Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who stated, "Thanks to us.. .the time will come when life will no longer be a simple matter of bread and labour, nor a life of idleness either, but a work of art."6 This statement opened all the world to qualify as art, and left nothing outside of the art world. It also contributed significantly to a leveling of the art world by engendering a non- discriminatory approach to art. Manzoni's 1961 LivingSculptureexhibition is a performance that typifies the extreme glorification ofthe artist. In this perfor- mance piece, Manzoni signed individuals' bodies, deeming them a 'living sculp- ture.' The artist saw this conversion to living art as so profound that he even established a system of color-coordinated certificates intended to certify what level of living sculpture the individual actually was. Goldberg explains,

the individual concerned would receive a 'certificate of authentic- ity' with the inscription: 'This is to certify that X has been signed by my hand and istherefore, from this date on, to be considered an

authentic and true work of art.' The certificate was in each case

marked by a colored stamp... red indicated that the person was a

complete work of art and would remain so until death; yellow that

only the part of the body signed would qualify as art; green im-

posed a condition and limitation on the attitude or pose involved

(sleeping, singing, drinking, talking and so on); and mauve had the

same function as red, except that it had been obtained by pay-

7

ment.

Manzoni took his artist status to the extreme in this performance as the public became fodder for his readymades and his signature alone became the mark of

the elite object, the art. In fact, Manzoni had no actual labor to put into these artworks beyond a signature and a certificate. Goldberg appropriately con- cludes, resonating with Marinetti's proclomation above, "A logical develop- ment from this was that the world too could be declared an artwork."8 But, it was the artist who could declare it so, hence the value of Manzoni's scrawl. Exhibits like Living Sculpture also paved the way for the privileging of other readymades and everyday objects to be used as art.

Interestingly, Marina Abramovic's Art Must Be Beautiful,ArtistMust Be Beautifulgoes one step beyond Manzoni's piece and exemplifies the glori- fication of artist as both creator andasart object. The title immediately speaks to the power of both an art object and of an artist. In this performance, more- over, the two merge. The artist combs her hair repeatedly (an act of beautifica- tion) while simultaneously repeating the title ofthe piece aloud. The act of speaking the title aloud and of repeating it throughout the piece empowers this self-affirmation or mantra and establishes Abramovic as the ultimate coming together of two powers in one body: the elite artist and the elite object. To have an audience view her performing this piece, which is an act that already establishes her as the art object, doubly reaffirms the mantra as more and more people actually hear the statement. The importance here is that Abramovic is seen and that she is heard, that the mantra reverberates with the public both physically (in the act of listening) and figuratively (in being convinced that what she is doing is in fact art).

Abramovic's elevation and display of self reveals both the artist's drive toward a very specific type of mirroring relationship as well as toward exhibitionism. Heinz Kohut developed a theory of relational analysis that identifies the individual's need for mirroring, or the "feeling in" and twin-ship of another person. Mirroring allows the selfto feel approval and mutuality and is therefore sought throughout life in various relationships. Kohut under- stood that interactions with the selfobject (objects which an individual experi- ences as part ofthe self) are either positive or negative; positive interactions

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fragmented self, and the adult self will fluctuate between states of cohesion and fragmentation.9 Selfdisorders, Kohut further explains, arise from either a failure to achieve a cohesive self or a loss of the cohesive self. A strong self can successfully navigate blows to the self-esteem resulting from failures and disappointments, however, the weak self cannot and consequently fragments. Winnicott similarly argues for the importance of a holding environment in which the self can truly being to feel real,the failure of which results in per- sons who feels s/he does not exist.10 He also argues that the mother is the precursor to the mirror, stating that the "mother's role [is] of giving back to the baby the baby's own self."" In this way, the infant sees a reflection of the self in the environment and ultimately finds positive affirmation in this reflection. Thus sets offa cycle of seeking positive, holding environments in the adult.

One can extrapolate that the artist seeks a mirroring relationship with his audience, or confirmation of the self through positive recognition. Art provides the artist with permanence: it is a part of the self that will outlive the self (if successful). The artist wants to feel idealized and mirrored, and the audience's mirroring is a means to this self-validation. With performance art- ists, however, a new level of elitism allows the artist to confer the status of art directly onto the self rather than another external selfobject. The mirroring is therefore sought with a selfobject that is thevery self,physically and mentally inseparable from the artist. Thus, the performance artist's selfobject is espe- cially sensitive because the artist is necessarily present during the exhibition of the self/object while the audience is concomitantly trying to establish a relationship with that self/object.

The exhibitionism associated with performance similarly reveals the artist's drive to establish a mirroring relationship with the other. Leon Wurmser writes of delophilia,the exhibition drive, and theatophlia,a drive that is asso- ciated with voyeurism, in The Mask ofShame. Interestingly, both drives are understood in relation to Kohut's theories. Delophiliais the desire to be seen or "to express oneself and to fascinate others by one's self-exposure, to show and to impress, to merge with the other through communication."' 2 Wurmser quotes Kohut in his explanation of this desire, furthermore, stating that delophiliais related to "the normal phase of the development of the grandiose self in which the gleam in the mother's eye, which mirrors the child's exhibition- istic display, and other forms of maternal participation in and response to the child's narcissistic-exhibitionistic enjoyment confirm the child's self-esteem."'" Moreover, from this, Wurmser understands exhibitionism as the grandiose self seeking out that very primary confirmation of looking, of the mother's gaze, in soliciting the audience to see him/her. Theatophilia, on the other hand, is the desire to see and to merge and control the other through seeing. Wurmser also quotes Kohut in explaining this desire, stating that this drive relates to Kohut's idealized selfobject, in which theatophilia"attempts to supply substitutes for

the idealized parent imago and its functions.., attempts to reestablish the union with the narcissistically invested lost object through visual fusion and other archaic forms of identification."' 4 Again, the focus is on establishing a rela- tionship through visual means.

The artist seems to express both drives simultaneously during perfor- mance. The artist is driven to be seen, to merge with the other through commu- nication, and to simultaneously see the audience, to merge with and master the other through attention. The emphasis on the performance-audience relation- ship confirms this duality ofbeing seen and seeing. This is especially true in performances that encourage audience participation, such as Marina Abramovic's Rhythm 0 (1974) in which the audience was invited to inflict pain or pleasure upon the artist's body at will for six hours using the 72 instruments provided. Abramovic was being seen by her audience (having allowed herself to become the art object, the object of attention) and simultaneously was seeing her audience (in allowing the performance to be carried out on both ends, allowing the audience to act upon her). Abramovic in fact talked about preparing for performances in an interview with Janet Kaplan and revealed something of this duality in her own experience of performing. When asked about readying herself, Abramovic explains,

Three days before a performance, this very uncomfortable state of mind sets in. I can't calm myself. Itjust takes possession of me. But the moment the public is there, something happens. I move from the lower self to a higher state, and the fear and nervousness stop. Once you enter into the performance state, you can push your body to do things you absolutely could never normally do.' 5

Abramovic understands her transition from preparing to performing in terms of nervousness and shame followed by a high. In Wurmer's terms, during her preparation Abramovic is transitioning from the passive mode of delophilia,in which fear of being exposed and of "being overcome and devoured by the looks of others"" overcomes the exhibitionist, to the active mode, in which the desire is acted upon and the exhibitionist actually seeks to fascinate and merge with others, "to conquer by looking, to merge...with the partner into an all- powerful, autarkic union, to incorporate strength and value ofthe other person and attain control over him."' 7

Interestingly, this duality also raises the question of whether the artist is an artist because she performs, or whether the artist's body is art because she performs and exhibits it, for the artist here is both observer and

observed. Traditionally, artists were thought of as those who "see beyond." In the early modem period, artists were thought of as conjurers who observed and presented a second, false reality. This power of observation allowed

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artists to be associated with witchcraft. Charles Baudelaire also described the modem painter as afldneur,one who observes. He wrote, "The spectator is a princewho everywhere rejoices in his incognito,"' 8 emphasizing that thefldneur remains hidden from the world while observing it. The resultant object was thus imbued with all the artist's observations, generating ideas of aesthetic significance and material importance. However, in performance this role is not clear. Where does observation take place? Can the artist be both observer and the object of observation? As Jaques Lacan describes the narcissistic display

of self and self-reflection,

All that is necessary is for something to signify to me that there may be others there... For the moment this gaze exists, I am al- ready something other, in that I feel myself becoming an object for the gaze ofothers. But in this position, which is a reciprocal one, others also know that I am an object who knows himself to be seen.19

The performance artist clearly sees himself as a conscious object, that which has both established its own object-ness (is the artist and observer) and that which revels in being seen as such (is observed).

Related to this exhibition drive is a particular facet of performance art: nudity. Performing nude reveals a new layer of exhibitionism in which the artist feels the need to show the body in full. In many ways, nude performances can

be understood as the artist's desperation to shock the modem audience. In today's society, ever more radical strategies are needed to actually shock the public as society is ever desensitized to external stimuli. One need only look to the Victorian era to see that minimal skin exposure, such as an exposed ankle,

was once sufficiently provocative and even scandalous in society. Today, a nude, in the flesh body is no longer quite as startling or provocative, if it is at all. Thus, performance artists go to extreme measures to ensure the shock and ensuing gaze of the audience. Abramovic herself has performed nude in many pieces including LipsofThomas(1975) andRelationinSpace(1976), which was performed with her partner Ulay. Abramovic describes Lips of Thomas:

I slowly eat 1 kilo of honey with a silver spoon. I slowly drink 1 liter of red wine out of a crystal glass. I break the glass with my right hand. I cut a five-pointed star on my stomach with a razor blade. I violently whip myself until I no longer feel any pain. I lay down on a cross made of ice blocks. The heat of a suspended heater pointed at my stomach causes the cut star to bleed. The rest of my body begins to freeze. I remain on the ice cross for 30 minutes until the public interrupts the piece by removing the ice blocks from underneath me.21

This type of nude performance clearly involves a second extreme element: masochism. Abramovic attacks the selfobject, the body. She also asserts her role as a martyr, as a crucified Christ-figure. The violence in this piece seems to be used in addition to nudity in order to further incite the audience and solicit their fascination and mirroring relationship. As Maureen Turim notes, how- ever,wecanalsounderstandthispaininrelationtonudityanderoticism. She emphasizes that Abramovic's violence is directed to the womb. She explains,

The woman mutilates the expanse of flesh connected to breath, to birth, to life, which comes between breasts and vagina. Here we might consider how masochism is often misconstrued as direct pleasure from pain, rather than as a complex desire for pain.2'

What is clear is that Abramovic's pain is deeply connected to her nudity during performance. Again, the primary goal here is to fascinate, and these elements combine to attract the audience through shock. Her solicitation for a mirroring relationship with the audience is so resilient, moreover, that she allows the audience to determine the end of the performance and resolves herself to waiting until they can no longer stand to observe her abused body, prostrate and bleeding on the ice crucifix in front ofthem and decide to remove the ice from under her. Returning to Wurmser and Kohut, Abramovic is waiting for the audience to look and to see, to confirm her presence as the mother's gaze does for the infant by taking action in the piece. Interestingly, in waiting for the audience to end the performance for her, Abramovic's art is not autono- mous as traditional, objective art was. The object is not whole and complete by the artist's hand but is dependent on audience in new ways.

Another issue that must be raised is that of the human element of Abramovic's art. Successful art traditionally held a position as a 'secular- religion,' as something with both aesthetic import and consensually valid hu- man elements. The question at hand, therefore, is can we identify with some greater human issue within Abramovic's work? Or has the leveling of art and the leveling up ofperformance rendered all works of art dead, as Krieger fears? How has the opening up of all the world to art changed the success of certain artworks? In Abramovic's work, there is often an issue of destruction. She frequently uses pain (whips, razors, etc) to inflict harm upon the object, the self, revealing a fragmented, destroyed object. It seems that these types of performances do not have the same connotation of an elite object flying high toward the summit of human achievement, which is how Krieger understands the traditional role of art and the art object. In trying to understand this, we must also assume that ifperformance has truly leveled art, maybe pieces such

as this start at a flat level anyway. In her most recent work, The Artist is Present,there is another issue that begs the question, what are we talking

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about? In this performance there are some familiar elements from Abramovic's earlier works. Again, the title of the piece acts as a forceful affirmation of her status as the elite art object, just as Art Must be Beautiful, Artist Must be BeautifuL. During this piece, which is very similar to Nightsea Crossing, Abramovic sits at a table in the atrium of the Museum of Modem Art without moving for the duration of the museum's open hours for each day of the exhibit, which total 716 hours and 30 minutes of sitting. An audience queues in order to get the chance to sit across from her and to see her. In this piece, the gaze ofthe audience and the hoped for mirroring relationship is more the focus than ever, seeing as this gaze is nearly all that exists here. One might ask whether the whole point of the piece is just to get that gaze, if Abramovic is only asking that the audience see her as a good object, as the art object. What human element is here? Possibly there is only the seeking of a mirroring relationship, presumably to compensate for the loss or failure of another. Hol-

land Cotter, art critic for The New York Times, summarized his impressions of the piece, stating,

In a sense the whole business is another act of self-enshrinement in the art world's ego Olympics, and that's not interesting. Divas are a dime a dozen, and I don't trust charisma anyway. More interest- ing, because it ties with her impulse to conserve a possibly unconservable art form, is the way "The Artist is Present" at-

His assessment seems to accurately capture the exhibitionism evident in all performance art. However, we are still left seeking the consensually valid human message here.

What is most interesting about the rise of performance art, however, is that despite the initial intent ofperformance artists, which was to overturn the elite object, performers have now turned the self into a new ultra-elite artist- object. More importantly, their ulta-elitism has generated the same fetishizing following that performance initially sought to move away from. The fetishizing of the new elite object, the artist, is obvious in RoseLee Goldberg explanation ofperformance art:

Performance has been a way of appealing directly to a large public, as well as shocking audiences into reassessing their own notions of art and its relation to culture. Conversely, public interest in the medium, especially in the 1980s, stems from an apparent desire of that public to gain access to the art world, to be a spectator of its ritual and its distinct community, and to be surprised by the unex- pected, always unorthodox presentation that the artists devise.2

tempts to control time, hers and ours.22

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To be in the presence of the new art object, the artist's body, is the attraction of performance art. TheArtist is Presentsays it all: let us be in the presence of an artist,let us see this art object. Thus, in this sense performance art fails to avoid the material and monetary culture of the art world. Very simply put, performance has materialized in that it is being bought and sold despite its supposed immateriality. The most radical example of this may be that Tino Seghal has been able to sell his ideas. MoMA purchased his piece Kiss with the intention of somehow preserving this transient art. One minor complica- tion, besides the question of figuring out what exactly it was that MoMA was purchasing (being that there is no object per say), was the issue that Sehgal's works are meant to be undocumented. Therefore, no documentation could go into the purchase. Erica Orden ofNew York Magazine described the transac- tion as follows:

There's no script or manual. The how-to is passed on orally, like a folktale-which is how MoMA sealed the deal, with a spoken contract. The artist will explain its workings to a curator; he or she will pass it on, down the road; and MoMA will have the rights to reproduce the performance forever.24

Performance has truly succumb to the museum culture ofart and, in attempting to rise up to the level ofthe art object, in attempting to demolish the elite art object, has itself become a monster of elitism.