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INTERACTION PERFORMANCE ART AND INTERNATIONAL CONTACTS IN THE NETHERLANDS IN THE 1970S Research Master Thesis Art History of the Low Countries in its European Context Utrecht University Student: Annemarie Kok Number: 0210137 Supervisor: Prof.dr. J.N.M. van Adrichem Date: November 2009 Table of contents Preface 5 Introduction 7 1. Performance art in the Netherlands 13 1.1.Performance art. An international ‘definition’ 13 1.2.Rise and scope of performance art in the Netherlands 17 1.3.Performance artists in the Netherlands 19 1.4.Places to perform 26 2. A characterization of performance art in the Netherlands in the 1970s 33 2.1.Covering tendencies with relation to content 33 2.2.Covering tendencies with relation to form 39 2.2.1. Formal elements 39 2.2.2. Formal arrangement 43 2.3.Covering tendencies with relation to the attitude of the performance artist 46 2.4.Final observations 48 3. Performance art in the Netherlands in an international context 51 3.1.Interfaces with European performance art 51 3.2.Interfaces with American performance art 57 3.3.Final observations 62 4. Structural relation networks 65 4.1.The circle around Ben d’Armagnac 65 4.2.The circle around the Latin American artists in the Netherlands 68 4.3.Two circles, two categories 70 4.4.The circle around De Appel and Wies Smals 71 4.5.The circle around Agora Studio 72 4.6.The circle around Corps de Garde and Leendert van Lagestein 73 4.7.Structural relation networks: interaction and intermixture 75 5. Conclusion 77 Bibliography 81 List of figures 93 Figures 97 List of videos 115 INTERACTION 3 INTERACTION 4 Preface Performance art in the Netherlands. That had to be the subject of this master thesis, which crowns seven years of study at the faculty of Art History, and is the final piece of the research master ‘Art History of the Low Countries’ at the Research Institute for History and Culture at the Utrecht University. During my studies the focus has always been on modern and contemporary art. Via Barnett Newman, the CoBrA movement, Marc Bijl and Fiona Tan, the art after 1950 ultimately got my preference. Very soon I knew that I wanted to write my thesis about art around 1970; to be able to examine ‘contemporary’ forms of art, but to have enough distance to look at it from a historical perspective. During a study period at the Freie Universität and the Humboldt Universität in Berlin (winter semester 2008/2009) I got fascinated by the performance art of the 1960s and 1970s. I was taking a course in Performance and Architecture at the Freie Universität, where we discussed several important representatives of ‘live art’. With my fellow students I visited the exhibition Re.Act Feminism. Performancekunst der 1960er und 70er Jahre heute (Akademie der Künste, Berlin), where we could experience three live performances of Collete (United States), Carolee Schneemann (United States) and Cornelia Sollfrank (Germany). Interested in the direct forms of expression and the moving and revolutionary qualities of performance art, I started to wonder what had taken place in the Netherlands in this field. A few days in the library, quickly gave me the insight that some interesting things had happened there with respect to performance art. However, not so much had been written about it. That settled the matter. I wanted to get occupied with this subject that had my interest from the very beginning and that had not been squeezed dry by art historians in the past. It has been a great pleasure and a real challenge to research a topic that had not been described extensively before and was consequently relatively ‘new’. On the one hand, it enables one to write new analyses, new conclusions and to contribute to the discipline of art history. On the other hand, with a relatively ‘new’ subject, one has to start with a survey research to map out the important fundaments of the research topic, through which detailed and profound descriptions sometimes (unfortunately) have to be left out. Furthermore, it has been a challenge to research an ephemeral form of art. Although the art works themselves have disappeared, luckily a lot of descriptions and video registrations of performances have been preserved. This documentation material has been of great importance for this research, to get an impression of, and analyze the performance art of the 1970s. Eventually, all the investigation, analyzing and writing has brought about this sizeable thesis. A ‘master’ piece in which I have put all my time and energy for the last six month; and with pleasure. The coming about of this thesis is also due to the support and supervision of Prof.dr. Jan van Adrichem, professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Utrecht University. Although he was still occupied with the completion of his work at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and had not yet started at the university, I already asked him to be my supervisor. Thank you very much, that you found the time to guide this project in a hectic period, and for the critical, inspiring and stimulating comments in the last few months. At this place, I also want to thank Dr. Hestia Bavelaar, for seven INTERACTION 5 years of inspiring education in the field of modern art and for reading this thesis. A last word of thanks goes out to Bart de Rijke, who supported me with encouragement and advice during the writing of this thesis. Finally, I want to wish all the readers of this thesis just as much enjoyment of reading as I experienced during the writing of it. Annemarie Kok November 2009 RMA Art History of the Low Countries in its European Context Utrecht University INTERACTION 6 Introduction Since the beginning of the 20th century, artists have been turning to live gestures of the human body as one means among many others to express their ideas. Various forms of ‘live art’ played an important part in the history of modern art; from Futurism, the Bauhaus and Dada, to Happening, Fluxus and conceptual art. Although the history of performance in its broadest sense – i.e. any form of ‘live art’ – can be spread over the whole 20th century, performance art became accepted as a medium of artistic expression in its own right in the 1970s. In the early 1970s the term ‘performance art’ has been used for the first time to indicate an independent form of art that brought to life formal and conceptual ideas. During this period, performance art experienced its time of prosperity on an international level. In the Netherlands, performance has also flourished as a ‘new’ and independent artistic medium in the 1970s. The Dutch art world of that time was characterized by a pluralism of art movements. Performance art arose next to concept art, video art, land art, process art and installation art.1 As an experimental art form, performance had a relative ‘marginal’ position within the Dutch art scene of the 1970s. Only a select group of artists was fulltime occupied with the new medium and it took a few years before the ‘traditional’ museums in the country accepted the art form between their walls. Moreover, only a small and specific circle of people visited the appearances of performance artists in that time.2 This circle consisted in particular of the performance artists themselves, people related to the podia of performance art and people involved in the art world in general. Most of them were higher educated and well-informed about art and its current developments.3 Despite the ‘marginal’ position, some important occurrences and developments would take place in the Dutch field of performance art. Several artists contributed to these developments, among them both Dutchmen and foreigners. The latter group had settled in the Netherlands in the 1960s and 1970s, mainly because of the kind artistic and social climate there. Next to the foreign performance artists who were living permanently in the country, foreigners also visited the country occasionally. Consequently, there was a lot of international intercourse going on in the field of performance art, which brought about several possibilities for the Netherlands-based performance artists to connect with their international colleagues. When considering the development of performance art in the Netherlands, a two-folded question arises. How can performance art that took place in the Netherlands in the 1970s be characterized, and what were the consequences of international contacts of Netherlands-based performance artists for this? In this thesis the focus will firstly be on the characterization of performance art in the Netherlands and the demonstration of covering tendencies in the fields of content, form and attitude. In addition, the international relations of Netherlands-based 1 De Visser 1998, pp. 192-194. 2 In the course of the 1970s the audience of performance art grew gradually; this was also connected to the growing acceptance of performance art in museums in the late 1970s. 3 See Barten 1978, p. 15. INTERACTION 7 performance artists and the interaction these contacts brought about, will be examined. These two focus points together have to demonstrate the consequences of the international relations for the tendencies and characteristics of performance art in the Netherlands. In the first chapter of this thesis, the general field of performance art in the Netherlands will be explored. To this end, first the understanding of performance art on an international and a national level will be scrutinized: what is meant by it and when did it arise. In addition to that, it will be revealed which Netherlands-based artists were mainly involved in performance art, and who were the ones only balancing on the borders between performance art and other forms of (visual) arts.