BODY ART/ PERFORMING THE SUBJECT AMELIA JONES University of Minnesota Press Mines LandonCopyright 1998 by che Regent of the Unive of Minnesota Every effort was made ro obtain permission to reproduce dhe illstations in this book. any prope acknowledgment has no been made, we encourage copyright holders to notify un ‘The cover image on papesback editions ofthis book is a dei from SQS—Sianfton (je Sr (1974, by Hannah Wilke. The wosk sone of thirty-five Mlack-andewhite [horographs, 5x 7 inches each, fom "Masccation Box” Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine ‘Ars, New York Copyright Era of Hanah Wilke All ights reserved, No part ofthis publication may be epraduce, stored in tetsieal system, o transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying. reconing, or otherwise, without the prior waten permission of the publisher Prblshed bythe University of Minnesota Press II Thind Avenue South, Suite 290 ‘Minneapolis. MN 5$401-2520 hnp://wwwapeessamneds Liteary of Congress Cotaloging i Pablicaton Data Joes, Amelia Body ar/pertorming the subject Amelia Jones Boom Includes bibliographical references and inde, ISBN 0-8166-2772-X (he acid-fiee pape). — ISBN 0-8166-2773-8 (pbk: cde paper) 1. Body art 2 Perlormance at, Ti NE4BGII66 1998 700'9'045—de2 97.3468 Printed in he United Sates of Amesica om asicfee paper ‘The Univesity of Minnesora san egual-opporaniy educator and employe. 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 0099.98 10987654321 {GJp back co the bod, which is wher ll the splits in ‘Western Caleure osu SARDLEE SCHNEEHAMK, CANLEE SCANEERANA: UP TO AND INCLODENG HER LIMITS ‘Only the Slave ean transform the World “ALEMANDRE KOUEVE, INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF wEGEL™ACENDMLEDGMENTS Naney Buchanan, Thatcher Career, Meiting Cheng, Judy Chicago, Michael Cohen, Allan ceSouza, Saundra Goldman, Lou-Anne Greenwald, Kathein Hoffinann-Curtius, Bea Karthaus-Hune, Kris Kuramitsu, Sam McBride, Yong Soon Min, Mita Schor, Barbara Smith, and Lisa Tickner for theit good thoughts on bodies/selves in culture. Iam deeply gratefl to Mario Ontiveros for his ongoing intellectual insights as well as his assistance with the picture e- search on this book, o Rebecca Welle for research assistance, and to the other cleeply inceligent students from the seminars I have taught on body att in the last four years at University of California, Riverside, and UCLA. 1am grateful 100, co the various archives, galleries, and libraves that supported this research, including che J. Paul Getry Insitute, the Museum of ‘Modern Art library and video and film study centers, che Atchives of American Art, the UCLA and University of California, Riverside, libraries, and the staffs a the Ronald Feldman Galley (especially Mare Nochella), Galerie Lelong, Ace Contemporary Exhibitions, Sandra Gering Gallery, Craig Krull Gallery, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Jack Tilton Gallery, and John Weber Gallery. This book was completed with the generous assistance of grants from the American Council of Learned Societies and from the University of California, Riverside, for Which J am deeply appreciative. Body Art/ Performing the Sibjet would not have materialized without the support and vision of Biodun Iginla, former University of Minnesota Press cedvor, and the energetic good faith of the presen staff ar the Press—especilly editor William Murphy. Finally, chs book is dedicated to Virginia S, and Edward E, Jones, my ‘mother and father, whose intersubjective postwat identities conditioned my ap- proach to the set of questions raised in this study in deep ways I have not yet fally grasped. A special note of admiration is due to Mom, who has continued bravely co develop her selfhood beyond the sudden death of my father in 1998: she has enacted for me how subjects chiasmnically intertwine but remain stub- bornly particulae ——7_ INTRODUCTION We abolish the sage and the auditorium and seplace them bya single sit without partition or barser of any kind, which will become the ‘heater ofthe action. Adit oman wal be led her te spor and th esa her te tor and beste, rom the fat tha the spectator, placed in the middle of the ation, is engulfed and physically affected by i ANTONIA ARTADD! ‘As Artaud realized in 1938, the radicalization of culrural ex- spectator would be dissolved and social relations would be profoundly politicized. In Artaud’s “Theater of Cruelty.” the performance of subjects in a "passionate and convulsive conception of life” would correspond “to the agitation and uneest characteristic of our epoch"? ‘This book argues a similar relationship for body art practices, which enact sub- jects in "passionate and convulsive” relationships (often explicily sexual) and ‘thus exacerbate, perform, and/or negotiate the dislocatng effects of social and Private experience in the late capitalist, postcolonial Western world. Body artis viewed here asa set of performative practices that, through such intersubjective ‘engagement, instantiate the dislocation or decentering of the Cartesian subject ‘of modernism. This dislocation i, believe, the most profound transformation constitutive of what we have come to call postmodernism. CASE ONE: CAROLEE SCHNEE In 1963 Carolee Schneemann stated the following in her personal notes ‘Thar the body is inthe eye; sensations received visually take hold ‘om the total organism. That perception moves the etal personaly in excitation. ... My visual dramas provide for an intensificationCAROLEE SCAMEERARN, EYE 20DP. 1963. PHOTOGRAPH BY ERRO. COURTESY OF of all ficulties simuleancously—apprehensions are called forth in wild juxaposition. My eye crests, searches out expressive form in the mates I choose; such forms cortesponding to a visual- kinsesthetic dimensionality visceral necessity drawn by the sense to the fingers of the eye... mobile, actile event ino which the eye leads the bodys In the same year Schneemann performed her eroticized body in a performance called je Body. “Covered in paint, reas, chalk, ropes, plastic” she has written, “I established] my body as visual territory” marking i as “an integral material” within a deamatic environmental construction of miteots, painted panes, moving umbrellas, and motorized parts. As early a 196, then, several years before the development of a cohesive feminist movement in the visual arts, Schneemann deployed her semualized body in and as her work within rwrRopv the language of abstract expressionism but against the grain ofits masculinst assumptions. Describing this pice in her book Move Than Mate, Schnemsna is dear abou her motivations: “In 1965 t0 use my body 38 an extension of my painting-constructions was to challenge and threaten the psychic territorial powerlines ty which women were admitted to the Are Seud Club"* In nero Sl, originally performed in 1975, Schneerann extended her sexualized negoriation of the normative (masculine) subjectivity authorizing the modernist artist, performing herself in an erotically charged narrative of pleasure cha challenges the fevishistic and scopophilc “male gaze”? Her face and body covered in stokes of paint, Schneemann pulled a long, thin coil of paper from her vagina (“ke a ticker tape... plumb line .. the umbilicus and tongue”), unclling i co read a narrative text to the audience. Pare of this text read as follows: "T met a happy man, / a steucturalst filmmaker... he said we are fond of you / you ate charming / but donit ask us / co Took at your films /....e cannot look a / the pron cter / the peste of elings the and ‘oud snsiiliy"* Through the ation, which extends “exquisite sensation in mo- iginates with the fragile persistence of line moving into space." Sehneemann integrated the occluded intior of the female body (with the ‘vagina ay “a anstucent chamber”) with its mobik, and apparently eminendly readable (obviously “fermale”) exterior? Schneemann projects herself as fully «embodied sudject, who is also (but not only) object in relation to the audience (her “others"), The female subjec is noe simply a “piceure” in Schneemann’s scenario, buta deeply constituted (and never filly coherent) subjectivity in the phenomenological sense, dialecticaly articulated in relation to others in a con- ‘inwally negotiated exchange of desites and identifications. “Through works such as Ineror Scrll Schneemann has established a “passionate and convulsive” relationship to her audience chat dynamically enacts the dislocation of the conventional structures of gendered subjectivity characteristicof this explosive period, Not only does Schneemann cleaey efse the fecshizng process, which requices that the woman not expose the fact that she is mor lacking buc possesses genitals (and they are nonmale, she also chus activates a mode of artistic production and reception that is dramatically ‘ntr- subjame and opens up the masculinist and racist ideology of individualism shoring up modernist formalism. This reigning model of artistic analysis (dom nated by Clement Greenberg’ then hegemonic formalist ideas) protected the authority of the (usually male, almost always white) critic or historian by veil- ing his iavesments, proposing a Kantian mode of “disinterested” analysis whereby che interpreter presumably determined the inherent meaning and value of the work through objective criteria!” tion’ and "nreoouction Body art is specifically antiformalist in impulse, opening up the cit cuits of desie informing actstc production and reception. Wosks that involve the artists enacenent of her of his body in all of its sexual, racial, and ocher particularities and overtly solicit spectatorial desires unhinge the very deep seructures and assumptions embedded in the formalist model of art evaluation. Schneemann’s self-enactment and engagement with the audience seriously com- promise the myth of a “disinterested” act history or art criticism. The perfor- mative body, as Schneemann argues, “has a value that static depiction... repre- sentation wont carry”; she is concerned with breaking down the distancing ceffece of modernist practice: “my work has eo do with cutting through the idealized (mostly male) mythology of the ‘abstracted self” or the ‘invented self’ i.e, work. .. [where the male artist] retains] power and distancing over the situation."!2 SSchneemanas work chus points to what I will argue in this book to be the particular potential of body art to destabilize che structures of conven: tional art history and criticism. In addition, Inver Sell opens up the issue of the potentially heightened effects of fominit body act, as well as body-oriented projects by otherwise nonnormatve artists who partcdarze thet bodies/selves ‘im order co expose and challenge the masculinism embedded in the assumption of “disinceestedness” behind conventional art history and criticism. As I will argue at length, iti such work chat has the potential to eroticize the interpre- tive relation to radical ends by insisting on the imeraubecity ofall artistic pro- cluction and reception, By surfacing the effets of the body as an integeal com- ponent (a matenal enactment) of the self the body arise stategically unveils the dynamic through which the artistic body is occluded (to ensure its phallic privilege) in comentional are history and criticism, By exaggeratedly perform- ing the sexual, gender, ethnic, or other particulates of this body/self, the feminist or otherwise nonnormative body artist even more aggressively explodes the myths of disincerestedness and wnivesality that authorize these conven- tional modes of evaluation, CASE THO: YAYOT KUSAP The particularization of the subject rook an especially changed turn in the per= formative sel-imaging of Japanese atist Yayoi Kusama, In a collage from the mid-ig6os Kusama enacted herself as pinup on one of her vertiginous land- scapes of phallic knobs, here a couch cradling Kusama as odalsque: this phallic/ feminine image of Kusama embedded in her own work is glued above a strip of decidedly uneroric macatoni with a labyrinthine maze of one of her bjnity Net paincings covering the surface behind her. Here, naked and heavily made up inwrnopucti0N at mnie YAYOT AUSAMA, SEX OBSESSION FOOD OBSESSION AACARONT IRFINETY METS & the style of the so6os, Kusama sports high heels, long black hair, and polka dots covering her bate flesh: all surfaces ate activated in a screen of decoration, merging the body of the artist with her created universe of phallic, patterned Iyperbole. Iam especialy interested in the role such images, a performative locument, playin enacting che artistas a public figure! As Kris Kuramitsu has argued, sis photograph “is only one of many that highlighe [Kusama] naked, Asian female bod. These photographs, and the persona that cultivated/was cultivated by chem is what engenders the usual teise assessment (in at ds- course] of Kusama as problematic!" Or, in the wonds of J. F. Rodenbeck, “Priestess of Nudity, Psychotic Arist, the Polka-Dot Git, Obsessional Artist, publicity hound: in the 19éos Yayoi Kusama was the target of a number of rara0nu epithets, some of them sence, ll of them a patt of an exhibirionis’s otorery"! ‘Working in New York atthe time she was producing these perfor tive images, Kusama played on what Karamitau calls her “doubled otherness"™ visssvis American culture: she is racially and sexually a odds withthe norma tive conception ofthe artist as Euro-American male, Rather than veil her dif ferences (which are seemingly irefutbly confirmed bythe visible evidence of her “exotic” body), Kusama exacerbates them through self-diplay ina series of such flamboyant images. In this posed collage, she performs herself ina priate setting for the publc-making eye ofthe camera. But Kusama enacts her "exot- cism” om a public register as well, executing other performances incading at leat seveny-Fve performative events beeween 1967 and 1970)" and posing in more public stuations. In a portrit of artiste participating inthe 1965 exhibi- tion of the Nal group ac the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Kusama sticks ‘out lke a sore thumb: there she stands, front and center—among a predictably bourgeois group of white, almost all male Euro-Americans (deesed in suits) — her ny body swathed ina glowing whisk kimono. ‘The pictures of Kusama ar inextricably embedded inthe discursive structure of ides informing her work; viewers are forced to engige deeply with this patiularized subjece who so dramatically stages her work and/ herself “Too, in the collage images of Kusama stich as the one discussed here, her bodys isleraly absorbed into hee work al indeed mei "I was always standing atthe center of the obsession over the passionate accretion and repeti- tion inside me" As Schneemann did in nero Sell Kusama enacts her body ina reversibility of inside and out, che work of art/the environment isan en- acment of Kusama and vce vers In he large-scale mirored installations, such as Kasam Bp Sbow— Endics Lowe Stow (at Castellane Gallery in 1966), she forced the viewer into a similarly reverse relation! Here, while listening to a loop of Beatles music, vistors poked their heads dough openings inthe wall of closed, mironed hexagonal room to see infinitely regressing rections of themselves, illumi- mated by flashes of colored lights A vertiginows sense of dislocation rocketed the visitor out ofthe complacene position of voyeurism conventionally staged wis works of art. With such works, the spectator is locked ino an exaggerated self-teflervty tha implies an erotic bod (an “endless love show”)—one that is both completely narcissistic and necesarilycomplicicous with Kusama here absent) body self nal ofthese works, Kusama refuses the artificial division —that which enables a “disiterested” criticism to ake place—conventionaly staged between and assumed sis:tareopucrton viewer and work of art. Folding the work of art into the artist (and vice versa), Kusama also sucks the viewer into a vortex of erotically changed repulsions and aetractions (identifications) chat ultimately intertwine viewer, artwork, and artist (as artwork). Kusama constructs obsessional scenes both to stage her particularized body/self and co express it externally—to spread it over the str- ‘rounding enviconment while simultaneously incorporating the environmen into her own psychically enacted body self: everything becomes a kind of extended Ash, But these scenes never fally contain Kusama, who performs herself well beyond the controlling mechanisms of art historical and critical analysis (hence hier disturbance to the critical discourse, noted by Kuramitsu), ‘Am 1 an object? Am I a subject? Kusama performed these questions from the 1960s on, enacting herself ambivalently as celebrity (object of out testes) or artist (master of intentionality), Either way, Kusama opens herself (Performatively) to the projections and desites of het audience (American, Japanese, Furopean), enacting herself as repreznatin (pace Wathol, she’s on to the role of documentation in securing the position of the artistas beloved ob- ject of the arc word’ desires).22 Kusama’ gesture, which plays specially with the interewined tropes of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity (as well as those of | artistic subjectivity in general), comprehends the particular resonance of such performative posing for women and those ourside the Western tradition, sub- jects whose nonnormative bodies/selves would necessarily rupture embedded conceptions of artistic genius, I is Kusama’s exaggeration of her otherness that seals this disturbance, building it into the effect ofthe work rthec than veiling itto promote a formalist reading® Kusama’sarisic strategies were inextricable from her identity politics and social polities; hee work makes explicit the connections I trace throughout this book among social and identity politics and the deep interrogation of sub- jsctivity characterizing chis period. Kusama activated her always alceady mar- finalized body/selF in a classically 1960s protest agninst bourgeois prudery, ‘imperialism, racism, and sexism. Many of her public events were posed as dem ‘onstrations against the Vietnam War, and her strategic use of sel-exposure was intimately linked to the openness urged by the setual revolution: like Schnee~ ‘mann’s body art works, Kusama’ are both enactments and effects of the sexual revolution and antiwar movements as well as the women's movement. In its radical narcissism, where the distances between artist and art- vwotk, artist and spectator ae definitively collapsed, such body art practices pro- founaly challenge the teigning ideology of disinterested criticism. As I have already suggested, when the body in performance is female, obviously queer, nonwhite, exaggerated (hyper)masculine, or otherwise enacted against che gen rnreoouct of the normative subject (the straight, white, uppe-middeclas, male subject, coincident with the category “artist” in Western culate), she hidden logic of Cxcsinism unedying modernist art history and criticism i exposed. The more cxaggeratedly narsssic and paticuaized this body is—tha is the more it surfaes and eve exaggerates its nonunivesality in relation to its audience— che more strongly it has the potential to challenge the assumption of normati- iy buileico modernist models of artistic evaluation, which rely on the Body of the artist (embodied + male) yet weil his body to ensure the caine hat the artist/geius “tanscends” is body through creative production, As {will ex pote a greater length in chapet four, the narcissistic, partcularzed body both unveils che artist (as body/self necessarily implicated in the work of art asa situated, socal st), turning er inside out, and strategically insists upon the contingency ofthis body/self on that of che viewer or intexpreter ofthe work. [As the artists asked as contingent, 40 isthe interpreter, who can no longer (without certain contradictions being put into play) claim disinerestedness in relation to this work of are (in this case, che body/self of the artist) BODILY ENGAGEMENTS: A THEORETICAL PROJECT THAT 1 DEEPLY HISTORIC/ Iki important to emphasize tha angue that such body art works have the pen- tial to achieve certain radically dislocating effets itis one of the goals of this ‘book to enact just the kind of engagement that I argue these works open up. That is if 1 were to insist that Schneemanris and Kusama’s practices miesarly destroy the stctutes of interpretation in art history and criticism, T would be denying the very notion of intexpretaton-as-exchange that this book attempts to argue through body ar I would also be hard put to explain why these structures are stil so firmly in place so much of the rime if this work I discuss has realy been 30 destructive of them; and, finally, { would be catching myself in a fundamental hermeneutic dilemma, since I would be defining works that supposedly will nor allow definicive interpretation (and suggesting that I am somehow “outside of" the structures and assumptions of conventional ineerpeetive models) To this end, all of the project: highlighted inthis book are described and interpreted through a model of emsyenent that allows for and indeed frequently foregrounds my own investment in reading them in particular ways. These are strategic readings meant ‘ohighlight specific aspects of postmodern subjectivity and specific ar historical {questions Ac the same time, I ave eried throughout to stay close enough to the documentation and other critical discourses that have framed the works histori cally 0 35 not to provide readings that are pure fantasy. Iam fully responsible for these readings which are highly invested and meant to be provocative.10 Agi, Lato the notion of opgent ad shige: Longage with whae experience as these works in elation £0 contemporanens theories oF subjsctie iy a acs consider my teadings to be a logue withthe bodies /seles ant practices. This project thus atcempes co enact rhe puaralesical performace” that are historian Thieery de Dave has located as satiated i these impor constitutive oF postmodernism: it proclaims body are projets as ridially post= snodeen even as it makes them so—it pfs their postmodernism.?> My reade ings themselves ate offered as “performances,” as suggestive, opencended ene sgagements eather chan definitive answers to the question of what and! how body art mans in contemporary culture.” But a fundamental dileminais bei into this project: while L argue that these works in various ways challenge the framing apparatuses of modernist criticism and art history and reconccve che subject, {nso doing T inevitably eae them through my own vests point oF ww and eefix the works as having paricular meanings. have generally tied to avoid sinking too deeply into the mire of this contradiction by reading the works as enactments of subjects (bosles/selves) whose meanings are contingent on the procs of enactment rather than atributing motives to the authors as individuals ‘or origins of consciousness and intentionality; in the cases whese I know the antists personally, this is inevitably a traughe enterprise and I simply tcy to sate face che particularities of these relationships: Te should be clear by now that this book is not a history of petfor- mance or body art but a study, chrough the intensive exploration of particular practices, of the ways in which body art radically negotiates the structures of interpretation that inform our understanding of visual culture. It is also an exploration of body art as an instantiation of the profound shift in the con- ception and experience of subjectivity that has occurred over the pase ehree decades, Schnecmannis and Kusama’ performative self-exposies, their enact- iments of themselves as both author and object, dramatize this shift: these pro- jects insistently pose the subject as ine (contingent om the other) rathet than compere within itself (the Cartesian subject who is centered andl fully sel-knowing in his cognition). These projects make clear thatthe Cartesian “I think therefore Iam” the logic powering modernist art theory and practice wherein the bodly (privileged as male) is transcended through pute thought ot creation, is no longer viable inthe decentering regime of postmodernist (if irever was). ‘The issues addressed inthis book, then, ate deeply theorized in tems ‘of models of subjectivity, artistic meaning, and identity formation, but they are also implicitly and explicitly historical. suggest—eeading through body art— that the very postsructuraist model of the subject as decentered is itself a InrRopueri0} tly historical isa, corresponding to the compler inerrlationships and tromnforaitions in reent intellectual history aswell a shifs within che pokiti- XL sovial ad clad atenas. Frustrated with what [view as an inceeasingly sino instrumental conception of postmodernism in the visual arts (ae chare secre ly Formed techniques auch ae montage and allegory or wantgandist strategies such a Brochtian distancistion), as well as by the frequent se of ven Licinian models thee educe ae ecepion¢o purely val model ten statically «ody act and ro 2 phenomenologicaly inflected feminist poststructuraisen (particularly the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty as rad through Simone de Beat, Judith Butler, and others) 10 r-enioy the sub= se af suking ard viewing art Informed and den bythe vicissitudes of Thy art itself [attempt to provide & more complex model for understanding Pee tm this book, dhvory al peice ate viewed as naully const. Tihs do not view poststructuralsm (or even economic or social shifs or If) as having “caused” the death of the centered subject nor do I sicwany of these a, strictly speaking effects of the decentering of the Cartesian sols. vcw poststuetutlism (in is feminist and phenomenological dimen- sions) a8 one of the most dynamic modes of the speaking of anew experience of subjectivity, as the philosophical vetsion of what body are cnacts in the real of culture. While body ares surely aot the ony type of culeural produc: tion to instantiate the dispersal of the modernist subject (a fair amount of the discourse surrounding feminist has pivoted aro claims that various prac- ries exemplify this dispersal, T argue here chat its one of the most dramatic and thorough ro do soi eget on te apt oe fs proacton,pesisely because of its entaliment of che subject as embodied in all ofits particulates ‘of race sls, gender, sexlity, and s0 on. Arche sme time, socal, political, and cultural context is racial co this analysis of what body att (and, for that matter, posstuctutaim. feminism, and theories of postmodernism) can tll us about oue currnt experience of subjectivity I addess throughout the book issues such a che suppssed crisis ‘of masculinity i the sosoe and the rise of activism in the 19308 and into the ro60s and 97s (including the rights movements, whish began insitendy co foreground the pacticularization of subjeciviey hae the most poweral body set projects addres); the obvious impace of the Vietnam War and its attendant protests on, expec, Americans’ conception of their lationship tothe state ‘sa subcextual bu aso cecil context in the shift co an anced, activist artistic bod as ae he fee love and drug cultures so active during this period (they promoted an armcsphere of experimentation to which body ae is incimately body et isconnceted)-" The multinationalization of economies and the proliferation of increasingly advanced technologies of representation and communication are sliseussed as deeply implicated in articulations of the body in more recent work Ics important to stress again that neither poststtucturalism nor these ‘other social events and processes are to be viewed as “cases” of body art. nor gin” Rather, boxy aet—like these bother clements—is examined as an instanton (both an articulation and a re- &s boty are seon to be their motivating " Niection) of profound shifts in the notion and experience of subjectivity over the past thirty to forty years. The key question I addrese through my engage ment with body artis the question thae ly morivated my interest in this ‘opie: why clmaxing in che fate 19608 and cary 19708, did the implicitly mascu- line, moséernistastistc subject (who had be Iaigely veiled under the shetorie sm and are history) come inctesingly into ve conceptun of the asset asin process, Kusama) and intersubjective elated to the of “disincerestednese” in ate eri gusstion thiodgh perform: commodifiable as art abject audience interpreter? BODY ART VERSUS PERFORMANCE The bay is the inscribed surface of events traced by language and ise solved by iss), the locus of dizaeosiated Self (adopting the illusion ‘of a substantial unity) and a wolame in perpetual disintegration. ‘The body is atone the most slid the most eho, concrete metaphorical ever present and evr distane ching—a ste. aninsteurnent an nvironment, a singulsty and 3 malic. The boy the most, proximate and immediate feature of my sosial sf nevessary feature of ‘my socal location and of my personal enselfiment and at che sare ime an aspect of my personal alienation in the natural environment. ava Tosue {T]he body isl... is both biological and psychical. This understand- ingot the bey asa hinge oe dhcehold between nature and culture makes che limitations of agente, or purely anatomical or physiological account of bodies explicit These evocative descriptions of che body open up the problematic of body art and lead me to clarify why I use che term “body art” rather than the pethaps. ‘more obvious “performance art” rubric. I use "body art” rather than “ perfor- mance ant” for number of ferrclated reasons, First inking back to the de- soriptins of the boxy T ase mentioned (all exemplary of a poststructualse theory of embodied subjectivity), Lane 1 highlight the position of the bay— Pe Incus of a "isintgrated” or dispersed “seas elusive marker of the sub- jects place in the social, as “hinge” between nature and culture —in the prac tices | addiess here. The tem. “boat aet” thus emphasizes the implication of the bod oF what I all she “body/selE” with all ofits apparent racial, sexual, gon. cass and other appatene or unconscious identifications) inthe work. Ke “iho highlights both the artistic and the philosophical aspects of this project— ‘xpects that, Tam arguing, are deeply intertwined and! mutually implicate in the profound shift in the conception of subjectivity that Tam “performing” tere through body are) a8 constittve of the condition of postmodernism ‘Second, while [tangentially make note of the broader history of “pet~ formance” in the viswal ars, focus in this book on a particular moment in which the body emerged ineo the visual artwork in a particulary charged and siramacically sexulized anc gendered way. The work that emerged during this period —from the 19608 to the mid 1970—was labeled “body are” or “body- swotks” by several contemporaneous writers who wished to afferentiae it from «at onneption of “performance are" chat was at once broader (in that i cached fuck to dada and encompassed any kind of theatecalized production on the pre ofa visual artist) and narrower (in thae it implied that a performance must actually take phe in lront ofan alience, most often in an explicitly theatial proscenium-based sering).°* Tam interested in. work that may: or may not sntally have ken place in front of an audience: works—such as those by Kusama, Schnesmann, Vito Acconci, Yoes Klein, andl Hannah Wilke—that te ple righ a name th at's ody, whether i bein a “performance” setting ‘or in the relative privacy of the st, this hen documented suc it can Be exper ad sabe gh pgp, fl, se, snd /or text I this way. Usee body are asa complex etension of portraiture in general (as will emerge in chapter 2) as vells.an obyiaus negotiation of che eajectory of performance are chat emerged from the eaey-rwentieth-ceneury European avant-gades.* Performance art has typically been detined as motivated by 2 “redemp- tive belief in she capacity of ar¢ co transform human lif as a vehicle For socal shonge, and asa radical merging of life and ar As I explore it her, boxy at is both far more and far less than this. Articulated by artists such as Schnee- ‘mann, Kusama Vito Acconci, and Hannah Wilke, body art does not strive rowand a utopian redemption but, rater, places the body/ self within the realm of the aesthetis a 4 plital dain (aricuated through the aestheticzation of the particularized boxly/self, itself embedded in the social) and so unveil theruropeett0n hidden body that secured the authority of modernism, Again, in this regard body artis mit “inherently | as many have claimed.” nor (9s we will see ‘others have argued) inherenly reactionary, bur rather—in its opening up of the interpretive relation and its active solicitation of spectatoral desite— provides the posibliy for radical engagements that can transform the way we think about meaning and subjectivity (both the atis’s and our own), In its activation of ine tersubjectivity, body art, infact, demonstrates that meaning is an exchange and oie the pony of any practi ig "ink pote Fn ‘ive in culeural value, AAs Frangois Pluchart melodramatically warned in 1974, body art “is ot @ new artistic recipe meant to be recorded trangquilly in an history of ate which i bankrupt” particulary in its shifting of the very parameters by which this history is constructed. Body art—which projects the body of the artist into the work as a particularized subject, revising, as Ita Liche argued in 1975 ‘the elationship among artist, subject and publie”—encourages us co rethink the very methods by which we fabricate histories of art and to rethink the ways in which we understand meaning to take place. Thus, we will see that ics body av rather than performance art that specifically opens out the closed circuits by which che ae objece was determined to have significance within modernise cit- ism, Body art proposes the art “object” asa site where reception and proxlac- tion come together: a site of intersubjectivity:? Body arc confirms what phe- ‘pomenology and psychoanalysis have taught us that the subject “means” always in celationship co others and ehe locus of identity i alays elsewhere. As I view body art here, it does two potentially radical things, By sur- facing the desires informing interpretation, it encourages a “performance of theory” thac aims “to replot the relation between perceiver and object, between self and other illustrating what is at stake in sch claims by encouraging acts of interpretation that themselves are performative, And ie opens out subjectv~ ity as performative, contingent, and always particularized rather than universal, implicating the interpreter (with all of her investedness, biases, and desees) within che meanings and cultural values ascribed the work of art. THE BODY OF THE TEXT ‘The chapter following this introduction seeks to provide a fim historical and ‘theoretical bass for the book by aligning body are withthe philosophical (phe- pomenological, feminist, poststruccuralise) theories of subjectivity that it both amplifies and takes radical value from. Following an examination of the ten- dency to downplay or ignore body art in ac discourse from the mid 19708 one ward, which locates the polities of chis omission in relation to the fixation on nrpop svant-gards theories of cultural production and narrowly visual models of the ave” Ltace a particular intellectual history in che United States andl France from the tosos onward. [foreground Ana Mendiets’s performative artistic pro- ject as exemplary of the problemarics of presence and absence brought tothe surface by body at, exploring the ontology of body art projects and addressing the specifiy of their multiplicitous existence as “live” pecformances, photo- eaphic textual film, and/or veo documentations “This history highlights the repressed phenomenological dimension of the French postseuctualis theories that have so deeply informed dominane dis: courses about postmodern ar, stressing the enbainent of subjectivity ovee what hus come tobe a reigning model of pure visualty: In order to understand the way in which body ar (which I discus largely as US. and European phenomenon, forsgrounding US, practices) inflcts and is inflected by the posttructraist, conception of che dispeesed or decentered subject, I thas trace an intellects Iustory through the phenomenological arguments of Maurice Metleat-Ponty linking his tadical critique of the Cartesian subject to Simone de Beauvoirs specitcally mms rethinking of the existentialist and phenomenological theory ‘of the social subject in The Scond Sex and then to phenomenological inflected, feminist posseracuraise models of performative subjectivity. “Though this renewed attention o a phenomenology upated through poststructunist and feminist thought. set che stage fora new understanding fof the ways in which body ae, in particular, can radicalize our understanding of postmodernism a8 not only a new mode of visual production but aso a ctsmaccallyeevised paradigm of the subject and of how meaning and value are determined in elation to works of art, The chapter thus saggest that en- saying deeply with the contradictions and insights regarding the subjects of ‘making and viewing pur into play in Body are projects can develop a new (im plicit feminist) racing praxis ehat is suspicious of the assumptions and privi- loges embedded im and veiled by comentional, masculinist models oF artistic re Chapter an xed explain of Jon Palak, who has ans tioned in art discourse as a kind of hinge or pivot berween the modernise ge- ius and the performative subject of postmodernism. Pollock (as perceived and incerproted through the well-known series of photographs of him painting by Hans Namuth and others taken around 19se) is a figure who was first, in de Duve’s paradoxical performative, splas as the quintessential modernise ignis: Polleck’s body is veiled and his transcendence averted by enthusiastic supporters sach as Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, whose image of Pollock as “aevion painter” celebrates his existentialist triumph over the materurapueri0m «as Pollock is then rida as. eal origin forthe peoformative aie tie subject of postmodernism by younger artists such as Allan Kaprow (ho, in his Formative t38 essay “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock,” reworks Rosenberg’ action painting existentialist Pollock into an aggressively performative one). Pollock is thus engaged with and opened out as a yee anthro (Michel Foucaule’s sot rom fo the "platy of egos” pu into play by the cultural ext)!" This focus on Pollock cafes my approach to the “author” the body/self) of the body ar project a. "function" of my engagement with its multivalent “texts” (photographs, “live performance, et.) Stessing its performative climension, I call this particular author function the “Poltockian pottormative Examining a some length the historical contexts for what I term Pol- locks “equivocal masculinity” (ith Pollock enacted both as quintessential catered subject of muda and then as feminized/homosexualized and proto psmodernsubject/objece of spectatorial engagement in his theaerical photo- graphic display address isos US, culture and its celebration of the “individ tal” (which itself relates to che Cartesian subject adtessed by French theory). TThe chapter thus reviews the critical reception of Pollock through a feminist seal phenomenological grid that emphasizes the tranaferenial.intrsubjcctive dimension of how, on the one hand. an artist and her or his works come to snean in tlation to her or his publicly aeticuated body/ self; and, om the other, of how pecformativty is not simply “adopted” by a younger generation of antists spontaneously in che 160s but, rather, was abways already apart of mod- ernism (again, this relates tothe paradoxical performative thac appropriates and exaggerate reartculats particular modernist practices as postmodern). ‘Chapters and 4 take on specific ease studies in onder co delve mote deeply into the dramatic shifts I ientify in relation to body art. Chapter deals with Vico Aeconeis body art practices from the late 19608 and early 1970s, which I ead in elation co the then still powerfal Pollock myth, I view Acconei’s performance and video-oriented works through postsructuralist, feminist, and phenomenologically oriented theories of subjectivity to argue that he both stages the heterosexual masculine norm of subjecciviey and, by overtly theatri- slam seconded by Johannes Birnger and numerous others” Aad yer in von art discourse, while performance atin its more theatrical manifestations coms ‘imied 0 generae intellectual support and broad audience (ofen eure the Parameters ofthe art world), body art was increasingly Fequenly smi by thos interested in debunking or overthrowing modetism because of te sup prosedly reactionary desire to ensure artistic presence. By the late topos, atin ‘nd generally moved away fom the elaiely modes, raw staging of chemocves in body att project Body art mutated into cither performative photogeaphic ‘ork such a the "film sil” of Cindy Sherman, or large-scale, ambitious, and st ast seminaratve performance at practices such as Laurie Andersons she asia, prosceriam-bound Unita Ste Understanding chi shift away fiom the body enables a deeper con textualization of body att projets from the easier period, projects thet wer Laigely dismissed, ignored, or downplayed in subsequent art rite discourses Jn the 1980s, body art as conceived inthe ate 1960s and eatfyiy7or was ses