Anthony A Scott
AH 5560
S. Noel
September 20, 2015
Body Art
Performing the Subject
Author, Amelia Jones introduces the term
“body/art” as a relative center point for many theories and examples from herself
as well as various historical implications in regard to the “performing arts,”
along with multiple perspectives and models of postmodernism. The body is the
medium in “body art” as a visual art and/or performance, which may give perception
through discourse a focus on race, gender, class and sexual identity, thus
leading to opportunities to exploit current cultural and political concerns or
injustice related to. (p. 13) Jones focuses on a particular time period from
the 1950’s to 1970’s as to the introduction of “body art” in the performances, which
through Jones views brought about “the dislocation or decentering of the
Cartesian subject of modernism” which produced the introduction to
postmodernism. (p. 1)
As a (center point) from this time period,
history is not disregarded by Jones, nor is the time period regarded as history “but
a study” of “body art” or performance. (p. 10) Pollock is represented as an
introduction to an (artist as a performer) in lesser words, to which Jones
refers to as “Pollock performative” (p. 16) and “a kind of hinge” between
modernism and postmodernism. (p. 15) The latter introduction leads to one of my
personal favorites as to the boldness and integrity of a “body art” performer,
Jones’s “Case one: Carolee Schneemann”. (p. 1) Although Pollock was perhaps coined
by Kaprow and noted as “action painter” with support of “Greenberg” and “Rosenburg”
(p. 15), I argue Schneemann’s “body art” performance of Eye Body was far more obvious in expressing the use of the body as visual
art then Pollock, along with an intense and “juxtaposition” presentation. In
her own words “the body is in the eye” (p. 1) and the eye of the current critic
Greenburg who was “disinterested” perhaps only saw the “body” with “hegemonic
formalist ideas” and missed the message completely.(p. 3) On the contrary, Greenburg unknowably perhaps
emphasized her message by his rejection. Once again, Schneemann’s Eye Body performance “radically
negotiates the structures of interpretation” during the “three decades” that Jones
centers her concentration on as a starting point.
Hopefully I haven’t presented
a paradox with my extractions and writing which avoided discussion of
historians and emphasized the possible beginning of postmodernism. In conjunction,
Jones makes clear on page 10, “This project thus attempts to enact the “paradoxical
performative” that art historian Thierry de Duve has located as constitutive of
postmodernism:”
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