Performing the Body/Performing the Text
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Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 04:55 25 September 2013 PERFORMING THE BODY/PERFORMING THE TEXT Since the 1960s, visual art practices—from body art to Minimalism—have taken contemporary art outside the museum and gallery by embracing theatricality and performance and exploding the boundaries set by traditional art criticism. Such practices prompt us to reassess our ways of constructing meaning from art, making us receptive to the element of performance both in the processes of art production and in the act of interpretation itself. Performing the Body/Performing the Text explores the new performativity in art theory and practice, examining ways of rethinking interpretive processes in visual culture. This collection undertakes two parallel projects: exploring art practices which perform the subject, and examining ways in which modes of performativity in contemporary art offer new models for interpreting artworks. Demonstrating how modernist art criticism attempts to fix the work with more stable aesthetic meanings, the contributors argue that interpretation needs to be recognized as much more dynamic and contingent. It does not come ‘naturally’ at the moment of contact with the artwork, but is worked out as an ongoing, open performance between artist and spectators, with meaning circulating fluidly in the complex web of connections among artists, patrons, collectors, and between both specialized and non-specialized viewers within the arena of encounter. Offering its own performance script, and embracing both canonical ‘fine’ artists such as Manet, de Kooning and Jasper Johns, and performance artists such as Vito Acconci, Gunter Brus and the Sacred Naked Nature Girls, Performing the Body/Performing the Text offers radical re-readings of art works and points confidently towards new models for understanding art. Amelia Jones is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art and Theory and the History of Photography at the University of California, Riverside. Andrew Stephenson is Course Leader and Senior Lecturer in the History of Art and Visual Theories at the University of East London. Contributors: Fionna Barber, Lisa Bloom, Nao Bustamante, Gavin Butt, Jennifer DeVere Brody, Meiling Cheng, Coco Fusco, Michael Hatt, Amelia Jones, Jonathan Katz, Karen Lang, Reina Lewis, Joanna Lowry, Peggy Phelan, Christine Poggi, Donald Preziosi, Barbara U.Schmidt, Andrew Stephenson, Philip Ursprung, B.J.Wray. Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 04:55 25 September 2013 PERFORMING THE BODY/ PERFORMING THE TEXT Edited by Amelia Jones and Andrew Stephenson Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 04:55 25 September 2013 London and New York First published 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1999 Amelia Jones and Andrew Stephenson for selection and editorial content; individual chapters to their authors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data, has been applied for ISBN 0-203-98355-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-19059-2 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-19060-6 (pbk) Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 04:55 25 September 2013 CONTENTS List of plates vi Notes on contributors viii Acknowledgements x Introduction 1 AMELIA JONESANDREW STEPHENSON 1 Reason and remainders: Kantian performativity in the history of art 10 KAREN LANG 2 Performing modernity: the art of art history 27 DONALD PREZIOSI 3 Art history/art criticism: performing meaning 36 AMELIA JONES 4 Cross-cultural reiterations: Demetra Vaka Brown and the performance of racialized 52 female beauty REINA LEWIS 5 Race, ritual, and responsibility: performativity and the southern lynching 71 MICHAEL HATT 6 Shading meaning 83 JENNIFER DEVERE BRODY 7 The greatest homosexual? Camp pleasure and the performative body of Larry Rivers 100 GAVIN BUTT 8 The politics of feminist spectatorship and the disruptive body: de Kooning's Woman I 119 reconsidered FIONNA BARBER Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 04:55 25 September 2013 9 `Catholic tastes': hurting and healing the body in Viennese Actionism in the 1960s 129 PHILIP URSPRUNG 10 Contest for meaning in body politics and feminist conceptul art: revisioning the 1970s 143 through the work of Eleanor Antin LISA BLOOM v 11 Dismembership: Jasper Johns and the body politic 159 JONATHAN KATZ 12 Performing clits and other lesbian tricks: speculations on an aesthetics of lack 174 B.J.WRAY 13 Renaming Untitled Flesh: marking the politics of marginality 186 MEILING CHENG 14 Andy Warhol: performances of Death in America 208 PEGGY PHELAN 15 STUFF: a performance 221 NAO BUSTAMANTECOCO FUSCO 16 Following Acconci/targeting vision 237 CHRISTINE POGGI 17 Performing vision in the theatre of the gaze: the work of Douglas Gordon 254 JOANNA LOWRY 18 What sense do the senses make? Aspects of corporeality in the works of Miriam Cahn and 263 Maureen Connor BARBARA U.SCHMIDT Author/artist index 274 Subject index 280 Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 04:55 25 September 2013 PLATES 1.1 Max Beckmann, Walk (The Dream), 1946 14 1.2 Max Klinger, The Philosopher, 1885/1900 14 1.3 Adolph Menzel, Skeleton of a Celtic Woman and Detail of a Statue in Salzburg Museum, c. 1887 15 1.4 Bill Viola, Stations, 1994 20 3.1 Robert Morris, Untitled (Ring with Light), 1965–6 39 3.2 Tony Smith, Die, 1962 40 3.3 Rachel Lachowicz, Lipstick Cube, 1990 46 4.1 Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Slave Market, c. 1867 54 4.2 Henriette Browne, Harem Interior, 1861 54 4.3 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Blessed Damozel, 1875–8 62 5.1 Lynching of C.J.Miller at Bardwell, Kentucky, July 7, 1893, from Ida Wells-Barnett, A Red 73 Record, 1895 5.2 Scene of Lynching at Clanton, Alabama, August 1891, from A Red Record 73 6.1 Hiram Powers, Greek Slave, Düsseldorf Gallery, New York City, 1847 85 6.2 The Virginian Slave, from Punch, 1851 85 6.3 The Black Dodge, from The Lantern, 1853 91 6.4 Édouard Manet, Olympia, 1863 96 6.5 Herb Hazelton, Marilyn Monroe as Olympia, 1964 97 7.1 ‘Wonder Boy and His Many Sides’, in Life magazine, October 20, 1958 100 7.2 Larry Rivers, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1953 106 7.3 Larry Rivers, The Studio, 1956 109 7.4 Peter Moore, photograph of Larry Rivers in his studio, New York, 1965 111 7.5 Larry Rivers, The Greatest Homosexual, 1964 112 8.1 Willem de Kooning, Woman I, 1950–2 120 8.2 Willem de Kooning, Seated Figure (Classic Male), 1940 126 9.1 Art and Revolution, poster, 1968 131 9.2 Art and Revolution, action, University of Vienna, Neues Institutsgebäude, 7 June 1968 131 9.3 Art and Revolution, action, University of Vienna, Neues Institutsgebäude, 7 June 1968 132 9.4 Günter Brus, Sheer Madness (Architecture of Sheer Madness), action, Aachen, Reiffsmuseum, 6 133 February 1968 9.5 Günter Brus, Vienna Walk, action, Vienna, 5 July 1965 137 10.1 Eleanor Antin, Carving: A Traditional Sculpture, 1972 146 Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 04:55 25 September 2013 10.2 Eleanor Antin, Domestic Peace: An Exhibition of Drawings, 1971 148 10.3 Eleanor Antin, Domestic Peace: An Exhibition of Drawings, 1971 149 10.4 Eleanor Antin, Encounter # 1, from the series 4 Transactions, 1972–5 151 10.5 Eleanor Antin, Naomi Dash, from Portraits of 8 New ?ork Women, 1971 153 10.6 Eleanora Antinova, The Hebrews, from Recollections of My Life with Diaghilev, 1970s 156 11.1 Jasper Johns, Untitled, 1954 163 vii 11.2 Jackson Pollock, Number 1, 1948 168 12.1 Holly Hughes, Clit Notes, book jacket photograph, 1996 178 13.1 Sacred Naked Nature Girls, 1996. Photograph by Jerry Browning 187 13.2 Sacred Naked Nature Girls, 1995. Photograph by Linda Kliewer 187 13.3 Sacred Naked Nature Girls, Untitled Flesh, 1996 193 13.4 Scene from Ablutions, 1972 200 13.5 Promotional composite photograph for the Sacred Naked Nature Girls, Untitled Flesh, 1996 204 14.1 Andy Warhol, Suicide, 1964 211 14.2 Andy Warhol, Where Is ?our Rupture?,1960 214 14.3 Andy Warhol, Silver Disaster, 1963 217 15.1 Nao Bustamante and Coco Fusco, STUFF, 1996–7 222 15.2 STUFF, performance, 1996–7 225 15.3 STUFF, performance, 1996–7 225 16.1 Vito Acconci, still from Soap and Eyes, 1970 238 16.2 Vito Acconci, Stretch, 1969 240 16.3 Vito Acconci, Following Piece, from Street Works IV, 1969 242 16.4 Vito Acconci, Trademarks, 1970 242 16.5 Vito Acconci, Trademarks, 1970 242 16.6 Jasper Johns, Target with Plaster Casts, 1955 242 16.7 Jasper Johns, Target with Four Faces, 1955 243 16.8 Jasper Johns, Target, 1960 243 16.9 Jasper Johns, Painting Bitten by a Man, 1961 245 16.10 Jasper Johns, Study for Skin 1, 1961 245 17.1 Douglas Gordon, 24 Hour Psycho, 1993 255 17.2 Douglas Gordon, Hysterical, 1995 256 18.1 Miriam Cahn, from Wach Raum II, 1982 265 18.2 Miriam Cahn, from Wach Raum II, 1982 266 18.3 Miriam Cahn, from Wach Raum II, 1982 266 18.4 Maureen Connor, Discrete Objects, 1995 269 18.5 Maureen Connor, Penis, 1989 271 Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 04:55 25 September 2013 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Fionna Barber is Senior Lecturer in Art History at Manchester Metropolitan University.