Performance history. What is performance marketing

Performance, it is worth referring to authoritative sources. According to the dictionary of pictorial terms, performance (from the English performance - “performance”, “performance”, “play”, “performance”) is a short performance performed by one or more participants in front of the public of an art gallery, museum or outdoors.

This form of modern art in the late 1960s, incorporating elements of theater, poetry. But for all its eclecticism, the performance has a number of features that make it a completely independent phenomenon of today's cultural life.

Distinctive features of performance as an art form

A performance is a planned action. It assumes the presence of a certain scenario in which everything can be thought out, including the slightest movements. The action becomes like a game, the rules of which are determined by the artist himself.

The artist is of particular importance in action. The author of the performance tries on the role of a certain character and chooses a certain behavioral model that helps to express the idea of ​​the performance.

It assumes that the viewer is not involved in the process. An outsider does not become part of the artistic action, but remains an observer.

The performance protests against traditional artistic principles, does not require the viewer to perceive it from the standpoint of conventional art. The action often has an ironic, parodic beginning, aimed at shocking. This expresses the radical aesthetic position of the artist.

Notable performance artists and their work

One of the most famous performance artists of our time is the Yugoslav artist Marina Abramović. She began her career in the late 1960s. This period includes the first experiments with sound and space. However, her collaborations with the Dutch performance artist and photographer Uwe Leisipen, better known under the pseudonym Ulay, brought her real fame.

A striking example of the joint work of Abramovich and Ulay is the performance “Relationships in Time”. The artists, sitting with their backs to each other, braided their hair and were in this position for 16 hours. All this time there was no one in the gallery hall except for its employees. At the beginning of the 17th hour, when Marina and Ulay were already pretty tired, spectators were invited into the hall. The artists managed to hold out for another hour, after which the performance was completed.

A seemingly simple question “what is art” today causes a lot of discussion. With traditional art, let's say, everything is clear. For example, in painting, these are “classical” landscapes, still lifes, portraits, paintings on mythological and historical subjects, and so on - everything is recognizable, familiar. But contemporary art - what is it? And what are performances, without which a rare exhibition of contemporary art can do today?

Characteristic features of modern art

Modern, or, as it is also called, actual, art has such blurred boundaries that even the most experienced professionals cannot define them. It can be said that it is a continuous experiment. There is an endless search for new ideas, images, techniques, means of expression. Art is constantly transforming and striving for novelty, up to the loss of the materiality of the object of creativity.

Very often, the basis of contemporary art is the concept, the idea as a form of cognition of reality - that is why today art is closer to philosophy than ever before. The concept is a purely intellectual phenomenon, thus, understanding becomes more important than the emotional experience of the viewer.

In this case, art turns out to have the right not to take its usual forms, and anything can become it: a random phrase, a photograph, a drawing or a process, an event, a phenomenon.

As you know, the world is changing, and art along with it. But why is it so drastic? Paul Valéry, a French poet and art critic, at the beginning of the last century explained the transformation of contemporary art by the fact that it had lost its basis, its original sacred meaning. In addition, Paul Valéry believed that the situation was aggravated by the fact that technology received a voice on the art scene - machines that sometimes subjugate the will of a person, and the audience themselves, until recently completely passive in relation to the artistic process.

Performance at the SKIF-2017 festival in St. Petersburg.
Photo: Yana Barabanova

Perhaps this is where it is worth looking for the reasons for the emergence of an endless number of various forms of art that we have today.

In addition to conceptual art, which we have already mentioned above, minimalism was popular in the 70s of the last century with its love for simplicity, monotony, repetition, then in the 80s and 90s there was a new surge of interest in color, figurativeness, figurativeness. .

Still later, movements based both on the images of the consumer society, mass culture, and on technical innovations gained fame. Visual forms of contemporary art are still popular, among which the sensational performance stands out, a kind of so-called. actionist art (from the word action, i.e. action).

performance art

What is performance is as difficult to define as it is to define the boundaries of contemporary art. It can be completely different. Perhaps the only constant is the emphasis not on a static artistic object, but on action, that is, on the very process of creating a work. For this, four components must be present (time, space, the artist himself and the viewer), thanks to which the work suddenly receives dynamics and comes to life.

Performance can be most easily compared to a theater that speaks the language of visual arts. They both operate with body plasticity and expressiveness, but there is a significant difference between them. Unlike the theatre, performance exists in a real place and time, not a conventional one.

The first performances appeared in the mid-1950s, when D. Pollock, followed by J. Mathieu, turned the creative process, traditionally hidden from prying eyes, into a public action. But their real origins must be sought even earlier, at the beginning of the 20th century. - in the street provocations of the futurists who paint their faces like canvases, in the antics of denying the rationalism and logic of the Dadaists, in the productions of the Bauhaus from geometric figures. At that time, painting had already begun to tear outward from the canvas, and such representations helped it to overcome the space of the picture. In the 1960s performances were staged by Yves Klein, Chris Bourdain, Yoko Ono, Vito Acconci, Joseph Beuys.

Marina Abramovic, Vahram Zaryan, Steven Cohen are among the performers of today. And in Russia, these are Oleg Kulik, Elizaveta Morozova, Andrey Kuzkin, Elena Kovylina, Stas Baretsky and others. Yes, performance as a form of contemporary art has not become outdated over the years and still remains very popular. Judge for yourself, in 2014 Art Basel, the most famous contemporary art fair, introduced the public to the work of as many as 14 performance artists.

Today, performance has become a familiar and sometimes necessary component of the exhibition space, which organizes it (both open - open space and closed in interiors), and also establishes communication between the artist and the viewer, which is especially important in our time.

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You are walking down the street and suddenly you see two sculptures in front of you, frozen and as if lifeless. Someone puts a coin in a hat lying right here on the sidewalk, and the sculptures come to life. They perform a dance or make some kind of movement characteristic of the characters they represent, and then freeze again. The performance (performance) is not over while the sculptures are here, it continues, it just passed into a static form.

"Performance? What is it?" - you ask. This is one of the areas of contemporary art. It arose in the sixties of the last century, when stereotypes were broken in all areas of human life: art, politics, social and interpersonal relations. Many new trends in philosophy, cinema, fine arts, music appeared just then. As for contemporary art, at the same time there appeared currents similar to the direction of "performance art" in terms of the form of presentation - actionism, happening and others. What do they have in common, and how do they differ?

To begin with, let's figure it out, a performance is a short artistic or theatrical action that is taking place at a given moment in a given place and is performed by the artist himself or by a group of participants. It differs from the theater in that the participants in the performance do not play learned and rehearsed other people's roles. They act within the framework of the character or group of characters depicted by them, "live" it. They do not have written roles, but the plot, as a rule, is present. Another distinguishing feature of this trend of contemporary art is the central role of the person representing it. If someone has a question: "Performance - what is it?" - we can safely answer that this is primarily the performer himself, his body, gestures, additional attributes in the form of costumes, props and other expressive means. This is the main difference from the fine arts, where the object of representation is a canvas or sculpture. In addition, unlike classical art, the perception and understanding of performance does not require special intellectual preparation, it is designed for any passer-by who looked, was surprised and went further, without thinking about how to classify this action, who was its founder and what will be effects.

The closest associates of this kind of representation are actionism and happenings. We already know about the performance, that it is a theatrical action of the artist, which does not pursue any specific goals and does not require the direct participation of the public. This is its main difference from happening, which is possible only with the active participation of the public. Happening is only "started" by the artist, and what will come out in the end depends on the spectators-participants.

Actionism is a direction in contemporary art that focuses not on the fruit of creativity, but on creativity itself, on the process of creating a work of art. An artist paints in front of an audience, a musician steps on musical pedals, and music sounds from under his feet, and so on. Gradually, actionism underwent changes and merged with politics and outrageousness. Today we see a lot of outrages called "artistic actions". One of the most famous and resonant of them is the “trick” of the Pussy Riot group in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. It was a protest action carried out through musical and visual means (multi-colored tights on the heads, the use of musical instruments, the recitation of certain political texts). Therefore, the girls believed that they were performing an action in the spirit of actionism, what came of it, we know.

The described directions (actionism, happening, performance) in art are perceived differently. Both supporters and opponents give weighty arguments in favor of their positions. Perhaps the only worthy judge in this dispute will be time, which will put everything in its place. Let's wait a little...

performance(English performance - performance, presentation, performance) - in simple words: a type of contemporary art, where the work is the actions of the artist himself or a group of artists. If in other forms of art the object is a painting, a sculpture, a moving object (kinetic art), then in performance the author himself is a work.

Performance is avant-garde and conceptual art. Occasionally, even dance, theater, ballet are called performance. In a sense, this is true, but the term “performance” itself means something else - something that is related specifically to a highly specialized genre, or when a performance is created precisely as a performance and nothing else.

For the first time the word "performance" was used by the composer J. Cage in 1952, when he performed the work "4'33" (4 minutes 33 seconds of silence) on the stage. As a current trend in art, it appeared only in the 1960s. The most prominent representatives of this trend in those years were: Yves Klein, Vito Acconci, Hermann Nitsch, Chris Bourden, Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, Oleg Kulik, Oleg Mavromatti, Elena Kovylina and others.

Performance at its core is not only a flamboyant avant-garde style that tries to oppose the classical arts and do something revolutionary, but also a philosophy of a special kind. Through special conceptual actions, the author tries to convey the understanding of one or another side of life. He tries to convey his feelings not through a painting, sculpture or something else, but through live interaction with the viewer. Often such performances are very unusual and unexpected. An unprepared viewer may not understand what is happening at all. Here, both the opinion and response of an experienced viewer who understands a lot about performances, as well as a casual passer-by who met with a manifestation of such art by chance, are valued. For this reason, performances are held not only in special places, but also on the streets, in public places, etc.

Living paintings, which involve the active participation of not only the author-artist, but also the viewer, are an action to destroy stereotypes and look at the world from an unusual angle. The creative component here undergoes cardinal changes. If people are accustomed to seeing the usual creativity in its usual manifestation, then even abstractionism or cubism for a person who is not versed in art can become more understandable than the same performance. However, some of the types of performance have become familiar and understandable to us for a long time. Such stylistic decisions as Flashmob, the same planking, Harlem Shake and even the infamous Pussy Riot punk prayer are also forms of performance.

Video: John Cage: 4'33" for piano (1952). The world's first performance:

Performance by Russian artist Oleg Kulik - Reservoir Dog:

A performance is a kind of action, a performance in which the participants try to convey to the audience a certain thought, idea.
The word "performance" comes from the French verb "perfounir" and literally translates as "fully supply" and the English verb "perform" - "perform".
The first concept of "performance" was introduced in the 50s of the last century by the American composer J. Cage, his performance (the word appeared on the poster) was called "3.33 minutes of silence." However, only after about 20 years the concept of "performance" came into fashion.

Performance definitions

There are many

• A form of contemporary art in which the work consists of the actions of an artist or group in a particular place and at a particular time.
• A quasi-theatrical act, directed and performed by a professional artist, alone or with a handful of initiates - hired extras, fellow associates, usually without verbal accompaniment, or such is insignificant compared to the pictorial part.
• The art of shares produced by artists in front of the audience. They differ from all types of visual art in that the main thing is not the result of the artist’s work (painting, sculpture, material composition), but the process of this work, that is, a certain action.
• A form of contemporary art, a short performance performed by one or more participants in front of an audience, pre-planned and proceeding according to some program. The meaning of the performance is not in itself, but in the space of deeply individual, aesthetic and event experiences of eyewitnesses and accomplices.
• One of the types of contemporary art. A performance focused on audio-visual perception, a synthesis of various directions: theater, music, special effects.
• A type of contemporary art where the work is the actions of the performing artist himself or a group of artists. If in other forms of art the object is a painting, a sculpture, a moving object, then in a performance the author himself is the work.

Performance - "everyone decides for himself"

In general, the concept of performance is so flexible that any public action can be called it, especially if it is incomprehensible to average minds (the American artist D. Pollack spread the canvas and stood on it and splashed paint around him on the surface of the canvas.
The artists of the “Collective Actions” group in the forest near the river sewed a shell of a “ball” with a diameter of 4 meters from colorful chintz, stuffed it with 500 inflated balloons, put an switched on electric bell with a battery into the “ball”, tied it up and let it flow along the river, stood and admired, how beautifully the “ball” floats. The artist Oleg Kulik dressed up as a man-dog and rushed at passers-by with a growl. Participants of the studio "InZhest" depicted "real flowers" on the pavement)

Performances by Marina Abramovic

One of the most creative thinkers in the field of performance is the New York-based Serbian artist Marina Abramović.
- Then she at the Studio Mona gallery in Milan, invited the audience to do something with her body, using the objects laid out on the table. The performance was interrupted at the moment when Abramovich, already half-dressed (the spectators-participants cut off her clothes in pieces), someone put the muzzle of a gun into his mouth.
- That connected your mouth with the mouth of a colleague by a special unit. The deranged inhaled each other's breaths until they ran out of oxygen and both fell to the floor, unconscious, with lungs filled with carbon dioxide.
- That washed a mountain of bloody bones in memory of the victims of the war in Yugoslavia.
- That exchanged glance with any visitor of the exhibition, which was recorded by the camera. So she looked into the eyes of 1500 people for almost 720 hours
- Almost two weeks lived in a kind of apartment (three open platforms), suspended on the wall of the gallery. During the performance, the heroine did not speak and did not eat anything, giving all the time of the day for everyone to see. She could not go down: the stairs were made in the form of knives, sharp and already bloodied.