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:”