lecture 4 - the body in contemporary art

Art Matters: Illuminating Contemporary ArtShepparton Art Museum2015

LECTURE 4: THE BODY IN CONTEMPORARY ART

Hans Bellmer, The Machine-Gunneress in a State of Grace, 1937

What is a body?

What is a body?

An Object-a machine containing our consciousness/self-receives meaning-Rene Descartes

-the body is a machine and consciousness is immaterial-Mind/body dualism

-The Description of the Human Body, 1647

What is a body?

A Subject-we are nothing more than our bodies-the mind is a physiological phenomenon-the body has agency-the body produces meaning

What is a body?

A Performance-identity is not inherent, but acted out-we don’t have a fixed, stable conception of the body

-ideas shift with changing social norms-social conventions, performed daily, to reinforce identity-eg. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, 1990

-relationship between sex, gender and sexuality is culturally constructed and socially performed

• An Object: receives meaning

• A Subject: produces meaning

• A Performance: unfolds over time

Cosmopolitan Magazine, November 2011

Leigh BoweryPregnant tutu head, 1994

Leigh Bowery, “Session VII”, Look, 38, June 1994

Bruce Nauman, Self-Portrait as a Fountain, 1967

Yasumasa Morimura,Mona Lisa in its origin, 1998

Yasumasa Morimura, Portrait (Futago), 1988-1990

Fiona Foley, Native Blood (detail), 1994SAM Collection

Richard Bell, The Pecking Order, 2007

Roy LichtensteinShipboard Girl, 1965

Richard BellThe Pecking Order, 2007

Richard Bell, Scratch an Aussie, 2008

Vernon Ah Kee, Unwritten #3, 2011SAM Collection

Allan Kaprow, Household (Women licking jam off a car), 1964

Gutai Group member Saburo Murakami,Passing Through, 1956

Yves KleinLe Saut dans le Vide(Leap into the Void)1960

Yves KleinLe Saut dans le Vide(Leap into the Void)1960

Yves Klein, Anthropometry Performance, 1961

Yves Klein, Large Blue Anthropometry, c.1960

Yoko Ono, still from Cut Piece, performed 1965

Marina Abramovic, The Artist is Present, MoMA, 2010

Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present, theatrical trailer, HBO Films, 2012

Marina Abramovic and Ulay,Imponderabilia, 1977

Reperformance at MoMA, 2010

Kate Mitchell, Lost a bet, 2011

Brown Council, Performance Fee, 2012

Gabrielle de Vietri, Three Teams, 2013

Ash Keating, West Park Proposition, 2013

Agatha Goethe Snape, Every Artist Remembered (Laresa Kosloff), 2011

Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano, Imagining Structures, 2014

Santiago Sierra, 160cm line tattooed on four people, 2000

Francis Alÿs, Paradox of Praxis 1(Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing), 1997

Bas Jan Ader, Fall II, 1970

Bas Jan Ader, Fall II, 1970

Sam Jinks, Woman and Child, 2010

• The body could be thought of as:• Object• Subject• Performance

• The body as a performance is the idea that we understand identity as a cultural condition, not a biological one

• The body is a site of contestation over meaning• Means different things to different people

• There is debate as to whether documentation is the same as reperformance in contemporary performance art

Some Key Ideas from this lecture