Marina Abramović is known as the grandmother of performance art, having built her notoriety mainly from her many live and avant-garde performances. Focusing on own of Abramović’s most acclaimed pieces, The Artist is Present, it can be shown that not only is the artist truly present, but also exceptionally vulnerable, both emotionally and physically, but also artistically. This paper will discuss how Abramović’s vulnerability challenges the cultural norm for women to be strong and guarded, while also challenging traditional roles of artist and audience. The Artist is Present was a piece of performance art located at the MoMA in 2010, where Marina sits at a table with 2 chairs on opposing ends. As she sits, members from the audience are able …show more content…
As Abramović is known for her physically demanding works, the performance in question is no exception, as she is pushed both to her emotional and bodily limits. By acting as a living mirror to the person in the chair opposite to her, she must remain uniquely engaged in each person who sits with her. Emotionally exhausting for anybody, Abramović also takes a physical toll as sits for 7 hours each day for 3 months. After having performed a similar sitting performance once before, and experiencing health risks and dangers because of it, Marina nevertheless goes forth with her performance. Her previous sitting performance had been with a former artist and partner known as Ulay; a man who was unable to complete the performance, due to severe health risks, while Marina continued performing until complete. Abramović even goes to say, “People don’t understand that the hardest thing is to actually do something that is close to nothing. It demands all of you… there are no objects to hide behind. There is nothing, just your pure presence, you have to rely on your own energy and nothing else.” Under this principle, and by accepting to do another sitting performance, Abramović challenges cultural notions that women are not as physically strong as men. Further she is able to prove that even while being totally emotionally exposed to her audience and physically …show more content…
As Helen Potkin states in an analysis of female performance art, “The notion of woman ‘gaining a voice’ is important to an understanding of feminism both politically and culturally, as are notions of reclaiming the body… performance art by women has sought to dismantle dominant constructions of women… subject resists the assumption of the passive female, and challenges the patriarchal gaze.” During Abramović’s piece, she challenges this notion of reclaiming the female body by actively, willingly and expressively giving herself up to her audience. She puts herself in a vulnerable position, and then again increases her vulnerability by removing the table, all in order to accentuate her performance. She amazingly promotes the idea of the passive female, while remaining engaged and present. She accomplishes her idea of, is she or isn’t she challenging the female construction by projecting her defenselessness onto her audience. This is a most-compelling argument, in that Marina is able to go against female empowerment by surrendering herself to the spectator, whilst at the same time proving her emotional and physical strength as a
People usually expect to see paintings and sculptures in Art Galleries. Imagine the surprise one finds when they are presented with a man stitching his face into a bizarre caricature, or connected to a machine which controls the artist’s body. These shocking pieces of performance art come under the broad umbrella that is Postmodernism. Emphasis on meaning and shock value has replaced traditional skills and aesthetic values evident in the earlier Modernist movements.
Frida Kahlo is known for the most influential Latin American female artist. She is also known as a rebellious feminist. Kahlo was inspired to paint after her near-death bus incident when she was 17. After this horrendous incident that scarred her for life, she went under 35 different operations. These operations caused her extreme pain and she was no longer able to have kids. Kahlo’s art includes self portraits of her emotions, pain, and representations of her life. Frida Kahlo was an original individual, not only in her artwork but also in her
Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." Theatre Journal 40.4 (1988): 519-31. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Web. 11 May 2011.
Piland, Sherry. 1994. Women artists: an historical, contemporary, and feminist bibliography. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press.
Works Cited Chin-Lee,Cynthia. Amelia to Zora: 26 Women Who Changed The World.Charles Bridge, 2005. Ergas, G. Aimee. Artists: From Michaelangelo to Maya Lin. UXL, 1995 Lin, May. Boundaries. Simon and Schuster New York, 2000. Cotter, Holland. “Where the Ocean Meets the Mountain”. New York Times May 8: C23.
Janine Antoni, a woman of many artistic talents, is known as a photographer, performance artist, and an installation artist. Antoni describes herself as 1“a storyteller with many stories to tell”, and is greatly influenced by Robert Smithson and Louise Bourgeous. In her artworks Janine uses her body as a tool, leaving room for the viewer’s imagination to expand on those stories as well as develop their own stories. Rather than focusing on making a feminist statement Antoni’s art pieces display the tribulations, troubles, and difficulty of being a woman. By conducting research and gaining more information on Antoni and her works through books, academic journals and the internet I will prove that her works aren’t made to make a feminist statement
No other artist has ever made as extended or complex career of presenting herself to the camera as has Cindy Sherman. Yet, while all of her photographs are taken of Cindy Sherman, it is impossible to class call her works self-portraits. She has transformed and staged herself into as unnamed actresses in undefined B movies, make-believe television characters, pretend porn stars, undifferentiated young women in ambivalent emotional states, fashion mannequins, monsters form fairly tales and those which she has created, bodies with deformities, and numbers of grotesqueries. Her work as been praised and embraced by both feminist political groups and apolitical mainstream art. Essentially, Sherman’s photography is part of the culture and investigation of sexual and racial identity within the visual arts since the 1970’s. It has been said that, “The bulk of her work…has been constructed as a theater of femininity as it is formed and informed by mass culture…(her) pictures insist on the aporia of feminine identity tout court, represented in her pictures as a potentially limitless range of masquerades, roles, projections” (Sobieszek 229).
When I first read about Marina Abramovic, I found her performance art can be both shocking and hold the attention of one. Her work ranges in physical intensity, emotional exposure, and sadness. Marina Abramovic work is about self abuse, self discipline, and unreasonable punishment and great courage. Through the conditions she puts herself and her audience in her performance. In my opinion, I feel Marina Abramovic and my main goal as an artist is not only to completely change the way art is seen by the public, but to push the performance the same line as fine art.
This investigation will examine a few key works by the anonymous female artist group know in popular culture as the Guerrilla Girls. In this essay it will reveal several prominent themes within the groups works that uncover the racial and gender inequalities in politics, art and pop culture with the use of humor. These collaborating artists work and operate with a variety of mediums, their works display a strong message concerned with activism connected by humor allowing the Guerrilla Girls to communicate and resonate a more powerful message to the viewer. The ways in which this collaborating group has employed many questions and facts against the hierarchy and historical ideologies which have exploited women and their roles in art. This investigation will allow the reader to identify three areas in which the Guerrilla Girls apply a certain forms of humor to transform society’s view on the prominent issue of gender in the art world. These specific ploys that are performed by the Guerrilla Girls are in the way they dress, the masks they wear, pseudonymous names of dead women artists and the witty factual evidence in their works. These are all examples to evoke audiences in challenging not only the art society which dictates the value and worth of women in art but also to confront yourself and your own beliefs in a way that makes audiences rethink these growing issues.
By making the images seem to appeal to the male gaze, she is actually deconstructing these patriarchal power structures by enacting them. Kerchy remarks her as a feminist because of her “transgressive texuality to female spectators by subverting from within the masculinized subject position, the phallogocentric language and the patriarchal society.” A paradoxical position is created to show these subversive parodies, which in alliance to the constructionist feminist theory, deconstructs
Through Frida Kahlo’s extensive self-portrait pieces, audiences are able to view her life in an almost biographical way. Each portrait conveys deep emotion and meaning, and carry a story which Kahlo has experienced. Her self-portraits are very personal, and overall show just how tragic her life had been.
His concern with the diversity of facial expression and with the expressiveness of body language is a conscious means of breaking taboos against what is ugly, absurd or instinctual. Sagazan’s performance explores extreme emotional states provoking more questions than answers. The contemporary “primitivism” movement in design and art examines objects that will become ritualized, layered with another spirit or energy - embedding them with a soul. Primitivism is, ins...
Discrimination; the unjust treatment of categories of people especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex. Author Khaled Hosseini wrote a story of two Afghan women from two very different backgrounds, one very abusive, the other supportive. The women are brought together by the turmoil in Afghanistan brought by war. Hosseini proves that the systematic discrimination and victimization of women is unjust and leads to demise through the use of characterization, plot, and setting.
The women in art history have used their passions to bring about a necessary change and bring women out of the shadows to which she has been pushed into over the centuries. Making painting their own they bring a new life and expression into the female personalities portrayed that men are not yet able to achieve. Showing the world where they stand and what they are willing to go through shows the strength in character a woman really has and that she is not the equivalent of a bowl of fruit or a vase of flowers in a man’s painting but so much more. These women are an inspiration because even though they lived in a society that thought them week and incapable they proved their strength and determination.
These three dancers helped to revolutionise contemporary dance and express their interpretation of it, all unique but adding layers to the genre. A range of movements that originated from these dancers are exhibited throughout the dance ‘Addiction’, choreographed by the eminent Mia Michaels and danced by two well-known dancers, Kayla and Kupono. A range of contemporary dance actions performed by the two talented young dancers successfully made Michael’s piece world famous, now regarded as an effective example of contemporary dance. The stretching all over Kayla’s body by Kapono’s hands demonstrates sharp, precise movements that are normally seen in this style of dance.