Performance in Contemporary Art

In this important new survey, Catherine Wood proposes performancenot as a genre of art separate from object-making but as an attitudethat has infiltrated the entire terrain of contemporary art. Fromthe musical-theatricals of Marvin-Gaye Chetwynd to the publicencounters created by Tino Seghal and the social activism of TaniaBruguera, a hugely divergent set of practices has emerged in the pasttwenty to thirty years which embrace the worlds of sculpture andpainting, spectacle and protest. Examining in turn individual, social and object-based approachesin the field, Wood first examines the influential performance art ofthe 1960s to 1980s: the body art of the Viennese actionists; the rawperformances of Yoko Ono and Chris Burden; and the experimentsof the Japanese Gutai group among others.She then exploreshow these sources have been revisited, reformed or rejected bycontemporary artists in the twenty-first century. This impressive bookencompasses international artists who fall outside the traditional European and North American focus, giving the reader the broadestand most up-to-date insight into the subject yet published.