It is interesting to compare stances from several years ago, particularly pre-1970s, to more recent writings that discuss use of the body in art. In particular Kenneth Clark’s The Nude, originally published in 1956, which when discussing the naked and the nude does so in terms of body ideals and conformity, the subject of the body or nude as an aesthetic model to be described and perfected, and as an inevitable object of human desire. The body is not discussed however in terms of either its owner, or the artist’s internal processes (if indeed it is the artist’s own body in the work, this piece does not speak exclusively of this); “A mass of naked figures does not move us to empathy, but to disillusion and dismay. We do not wish to imitate; we wish to perfect.” (Clark 1980:4) Clark regards the body merely as a tool or object for observation when making art, to be considered technically or aesthetically, but not symbolically. Despite expressing the belief that an audience does not share an empathic connection with the subject however, what this piece does touch on is that the human body does prompt a universal reaction – in this instance desire.
An essay that really emphasises the connection between the artist and audience in terms of the body being a universal symbol of humanity is Tracey Warr’s The Informe Body which states that when viewing another’s body we are always doing so through our own, making our perception of the artwork not only cognitive but also inherently experiential and personal; “The Artist’s body does not allow its audience the luxury of an academic, objective stance – it commands a bodily as well as an imaginative empathy from its viewers.” (Warr 2000:Unpaginated) This piece also discusses the significance of the artist’s body in that it remains involved with the artist’s life long after the artwork in a constant state of flux: “An art object that will not stay put and fixed in its role... as art object the artist’s body is always ephemeral.” (Warr 2000)
In The Body as Language from Body art and Performance (Vergine 2000), it is suggested that the relationship between artist and audience goes even further, or possibly inverts; that it is the audience that validates the artist in these instances, stating that “It is indispensible that the public co-operate with him [the artist], since what he needs is to be confirmed in his identity.” (Vergine 2000:26) This piece largely hypothesises on the motives behind using the body in art, with particular emphasis on psycho-physical connections and the reciprocation and projection between artist and audience, suggesting that the primary intention for an artist using their own body in their work is to explore and affirm their identities with other individuals. In stark contrast to Clark’s The Nude and his view that the body is simply an object for observation or study, Vergine takes the position that there is an irrevocable connection between the artist’s mind and body, that the work is the artist, and states that in the context of mime, though undoubtedly applicable to any use of gesture in art, that “the body has the privilege of giving symbolic evidence to the unconscious conflict” (Vergine 2000:24); using the body directly as a tool for communicating internal processes.
Similarly, in The Body in Contemporary Art by Sally O’Reilly, the body is regarded in terms of its definite and inextricable connection with the human psyche as opposed to viewing the body merely as a vessel for the mind. A clear distinction is made between ‘The Body’ and ‘The Figure’; “Figurative artwork tends to reside in the realm of the optical, whereas that involving the body requires a wider consideration.” (O’Reilly 2009:10), suggesting that by this definition, what is discussed in The Nude is ‘The Figure’, which corroborates with Clark’s attitude towards the Nude as an aesthetic to be studied and admired, however in pieces such as The Informe Body, or particularly those which discuss performance art, what we are experiencing is ‘The Body’. The wording, wider consideration, in the above quote suggests almost a dismissive attitude to work relating to ‘The Figure’, as though it is less intellectually involved than that which discusses the Artist’s ‘Body’.
In complete opposition to these more recent essays, there is a short piece from 1928 titled Art – and the Personal Life by Marsden Hartley taken from Theories of Modern Art (Chipp 1968) which expresses an extreme distaste for any inclination of the artist to explore themselves in their work; a strong opinion that art and the personal life should be kept separate, and that art should be approached only logically and technically and never be hampered by emotion: “I do not admire the irrationality of the imaginative life.” (Chipp 1968:527) It is interesting that these sentiments most closely correlate with those in Clark’s The Nude, although much later than this piece, another which was written before performance art once again, experienced increased popularity. It is possible that this has something to do with dispelling the taboo and controversy that surrounds using the body/artist’s identity in work, which appears to become more acceptable as time goes by and boundaries are broken down. Due to these changes in attitudes, older resources such as these may be rendered irrelevant for my research project.
It would appear that in many instances, use of the artist’s body in their own work is done so largely as a means of effective communication with an audience, who as humans share an affinity through their own bodies; the body representing a universal language that is ubiquitously relatable. Use of other means of language than text when discussing autobiography is approached in the introduction Writing Identity: On Autobiography in Art (Steiner 2004), which addresses the difficulty of tackling autobiography in creative mediums, and the benefits of using both methods other than text, and selection and omission when discussing autobiography: “If coherent, continuous autobiographical narrative is an impossibility, then it makes sense to open up the study of autobiography to other forms of expression.” (Steiner 2004:13) Use of tools other than text, such as gesture and the body, potentially create a more direct or involved creative communication, even if the narrative is less linear or thorough than a standard textual autobiography. This relates back to Warr’s piece, The Informe Body, which suggests that an audience experiences another’s body through their own, making an emotional connection inevitable.
The subject of autobiography in performance art is also briefly discussed in Goldberg’s Performance Art (2001), where the voyeuristic relationship between audience and artist is again touched upon; “Autobiographical performances were easy to follow and the fact that artists revealed intimate information about themselves set up a particular empathy between performer and audience.” (Goldberg 2001:174) suggesting once more that the audience’s reaction or perception of the piece is of great importance, and in this instance using the artist’s own body in the work when describing autobiography serves only to emphasise the act of sharing oneself. In concordance with Vergine’s The Body as Language which suggests that the audience is required to validate the artist, this piece states that these ‘autobiographical performers’ “rely on the willingness of the audience to empathise with their intentions” (Goldberg 2001)
As my interests currently lie largely in the relationship that the artist and their work holds with the receptive audience, the resources which directly discuss particular artist examples or methods of communication and relationship to the audience appear to be the most useful, and particularly with regards to when they were written, it would appear that attitudes towards these areas vary significantly. Particularly in the case of performance art – which a large proportion of art which utilises the artist’s own body could be described as – it is very clear that the older sources are of less relevance, and could definitely be defined as ‘outdated’ in many ways, however it is of value to see how greatly opinions towards the subject have changed, particularly in the 1960s/70s, as a pivotal time for performance art/body art.
Steiner, B (2004) Autobiography. London: Thames & Hudson. P. 11-28
Vergine, L (2000) Body Art and Performance; The Body as Language. Milano: Skira Editore. P. 7-27
O’Reilly, S (2009) The Body in Contemporary Art. London: Thames &Hudson P. 7-15
Warr, T (2000) The Informe Body. [Online] Available at: http://people.brunel.ac.uk/bst/1no1/traceywarr.html (Last accessed: Jun 12 2012)
Clark, K (1980) The Nude. Middlesex; New York: Penguin Books. P. 1-25
Goldberg, R (2001) Performance Art. London: Thames & Hudson. P. 172-177
Chipp, H. B. (1968) Theories of Modern Art. London; California: University of California Press. P. 526-528
R: Your choice of sources was really interesting. It’s good
to see a reassessment of some of those older texts, and I feel that that’s
actually given you some quite interesting results.
J: Yes, well we’re always told to use newer sources, but I
think that for this, especially, opinions have changed so much that it seems
quite important to point that out.
R: And I think you’ve done that really successfully here as
well, to bring through the different notions that are discussed. So, like a
reassessment of these older texts. And I thought actually there’s still a
relevancy in doing that because we do this have these things like ‘The Nude’ in
art, we do still have, maybe in society as well, a weird set of ideas or ways
that we interact with the body, you know, as object, or as subject, or this
kind of confusion that happens between the two, we do see there being
differences between nakedness and nudity. These levels of transgression are
quite an interesting point. Like over the last ten years, in this country
definitely, we have so much more ready access to graphic imagery of naked people
than we’ve ever had. Do you know what I mean? In some ways.
J: But it hasn’t really broken down that taboo.
R: It’s still there, isn’t it? And we might see that since
the 1960s or 1970s, the way that artists use their bodies, or bodies in general
in art, the things that would have been shocking 30, 40, 50 years ago, are
relatively commonplace. But that notion of transgression is still there. So
that really made sense to be looking at how those perceptions have changed, or
how those descriptions... part of it is about the linguistics. So when you’re
talking about Clark (The Nude, ‘56), and also Chipp (Art and the Personal Life,
‘28), these are kind of, they have a pull in terms of the words that we use to
describe things. So I’ve just put these little ticks in lots of places
throughout as well, because I think there are a lot of really strong points in
there. What I’m interested in now as well is where this is going. Whose
practices you’re interested in looking at. Because this is a great grounding,
but then there’s that thing of who are you intrigued by? Who do you want to
examine?
J: Well there are a few... one was John Coplans. It’s quite
hard to find any information about him, but I’ve ordered one of his books. I
think he’s in his 70s now, and he used to work as a curator or an editor or
something but now just exclusively takes photographs of his body... but he’s
old and hairy and fat, and it’s almost challenging, I guess, what we want or
expect to see; Talking about decay, and these things that we don’t really want
to engage with. Francesca Woodman is another nice one. Specifically artists who
use their bodies to communicate identity... obviously not all artists who use
their own body are talking about themselves, or their own state. I think the
effectiveness of that, and using gesture as opposed to other methods of
communication. Like that one piece, Autobiography, talks about using art or
using other mediums than text to communicate.
R: Yes, I thought that was a really nice distinction as
well, that idea that rather than using description or narrative, words, text,
writing, what could... It’s a little bit like the conversation you might have
around a scar... that conversation, in looking at the scarred body, is entirely
different than that which you would have when looking at a diary.
J: I think it’s the empathy thing as well, which a lot of them
did touch upon. I think The Informe Body was the best one, because it was saying
that you can’t view another body without doing it through your own, because it’s
this thing that we all have in common. I think that’s why it’s such a good way
to communicate, using a body or your body.
R: This idea of having a reference point that, as human
beings we all have. And then do you think that that notion of the common
reference point... so in someone’s work like john Coplans, just saying that it’s
an old body, it’s a hairy body, there are these descriptions, and these notions
that those things are not common, or that those things are... where does that
idea come from? That those things are uncommon, that those things are un-experienced
by other people in their own bodies?
J: Well I guess ... everything that we see – and I don’t want
to really go into the media, and ‘the perfect body’, but as you say we have all
of this access to images of bodies and nudity, but it’s not direct and truthful,
is it? And I think that’s where these notions come from... There are some
really nice quotes about Coplans; ‘Unlike a younger generation who are using
the body as site and subject, Coplans is not really interested in parading the
assaults and dislocations of late twentieth century humanity, be they psychological,
sexual, social or political. Coplans’ ambitions transcend the fractured body
politic. Instead, his purview is the individual as embodied time and
experience, both in its own right and as just one in a vast human continuum.
His is a nakedness we all share.’ So about empathy I think, really. He talks
about it being sort of primordial as well, you know?
R: And it’s this thing also of like, literally as well, but ‘stripped
bare; The notion that when we have just our bodies, when we don’t have any of
these other semiotic signifiers, so anything else that we dress ourselves with
for example, or make up, any of these other things, they all carry a political
meaning, genderal, societal, and once there’s a kind of stripping bare, whether
we are actually down to being common, being in
common with each other, or whether our bodies still carry those societal thins.
They probably do, don’t they? They carry gender, they carry...
J: But is that again because of all of the information we
receive... how we’re supposed to perceive the body after all of this imagery
that’s forced upon us all the time?
R: It’s a big question, isn’t it? Do you feel like working
your way through these different sources is helping to make sense of how these
things fit together?
J: Without a doubt, so helpful. I have been reading quite a
lot anyway, but studying the sources in this way, and breaking them down...
Because I do have a ‘question’ in mind, about the efficiency of using the body
as a tool of communication, but especially doing this, what interested me is
the influences... what can influence that; empathy, association, all of the
things that can break this down. So it’s not just a simple case of whether this
is effective or not, it’s all of the other things which interfere with that.
R: Is there a different also between being in the same
place, the audience and the artist being in the same physical site as each
other. Because this work (Coplans) looks to me as though it’s shown in
photographs, and it’s to be shown in
photographs, so we’re never going to be sitting in the room with this body, we’re
viewing mediated, framed, edited, black and white images of this body. What
would be the inferences of... have you seen any documentation of the Marina Abromovic
Artist is Present piece? She made a piece about 2 years ago at MoMA to go
alongside a retrospective of her work. And in her work, one of the most
important things is that the artist is present, that the artist is there. You are
often invited to engage with the artist, with their body in some way.
J: is this the one where she just sat there for two months?
R: Yeah, so for this massive retrospective that was dealt
with partly by almost making re-enactments of some of her early works, using
actors to do that, and she trained them all in a weird kind of bootcamp so they
would take on what she needed them to take on in their bodies to be able to do
that, and the other piece of work was... she’s sitting there like this... and
you can sit in the seat opposite her and be there. But, because this is
happening in MoMA, happening in New York, because she’s become a weird
superstar, a little bit, this was all photographed, intensely documented, and
you may be recorded in a number of ways, being on show as an audience member. And
you could queue up just to watch as well, to watch this kind of staged, being
of bodies. And I wonder whether.... I don’t know if its place is in this
project, but the difference between... There’s also somebody who takes a completely
different approach; Kira o’Reilly, have you come across her work before? This
is probably relatively representative of the types of performance situations
that she’ll often set up. So this is for a one-to-one performance where you
make an appointment to book in, you come into this space, which is a domestic
sized room, she’s sitting there, and on her back you can see these little
scars, little marks, and some of them are fresh, some of them are wounds and
she hands you this razorblade and invites you to add another wound to her back,
so to cut her back. There’s nobody else there, just the two of you, a human and
another human. This empathy that you talk about must be there. I mean, I haven’t
experienced this work, but this is the description of it. And do we start to
consider and have empathy for a body in a different way than we do for like John
Coplans’ photographs.
J: I think I really need to look at somebody like that, because
all of the artists that I’ve seriously looked at haven’t been live artists, or
have been performance artists, but in a way that isn’t live art.
R: I wonder if it’s a dynamic that... because it seems that
there would be a difference, and I wonder whether also going to experience some
work like this as well might be an important things to do. Was I telling you
about In-between Time Festival that’s in Bristol? Put it in your diary. It’s a
festival that’s called In-between Time., and it’s probably the next of the big
performance festivals that’s happening, it’s like a long weekend, it’s worth
having a look at the website. There’ll be a range of different things, but
there will be one-to-one encounter work as a part of it. So it may be worth
going to actually get access to that.
J: The only piece I’ve ever been to like that it’s Fran’s (Francesca
Steele)
R: And that would be a really good example as well. Straight
away, that’s got that one-to-one encounter, those notions of... the thing to do
with empathy that is also to do with comparing yourself to others. So it’s
like, you’ve got two hands, I’ve got two hands.
J: There’s a voyeurism to it as well, isn’t there.
R: Fran’s piece there would be a really great example
of a piece that deals with that very skilfully; deals with those nuanced
things, that mediation, of there you look at yourself in the mirror, you know?
These parts that reference our access to naked bodies, but our alienation from
them. Those kinds of things. As a counterpoint to... because you could say that
actually although we feel that empathy with these pieces of work (Non-live), is
that there is that recognition, there is that stuff, but there’s also something
that’s pushing me away from this. That idea that any time we have to filter, or
mediate, we actually become a little bit alienated from it. And that festival
should be quite a good thing, so see a range of live pieces in a very condense
period of time could be quite useful.
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