Some Relations between Conceptual and Performance Art – Summary

In the article ‘Some Relations between Conceptual and Performance Art’ by Frazer Ward, he examines the relations between conceptual and performance art, as the title implies. Looking at the similarities and connections between both during the period of the late 1960’s to early 1970’s.

Frazer Ward suggests that the concept of a work should come before the materialization of a work. The temporal position of performance evokes these same ideas with the material considerations becoming secondary in conceptual pieces. Many artists were heavily influenced by this deterioration of aestheticism and the dematerialization of art, many artists shifted away from the galleries to creating art just in studio spaces, art then no longer existed as much as a commodity but more so as something in the moment, more temporal.

In the late 1960’ to early 1970’s there was clear overlapping between conceptual and performance art, due to this many thought of Performance Art as an opposition to Conceptual Art. In the reading Ward looks at the art work ‘Mirror Piece’ (1967) by Ian Burns and Vito Acconci’s ‘Step Piece’ (1970) comparing them in order to find the connections. ‘Mirror Piece’ is made up of 13 typed pages of notes and diagrams and a mirror, both framed behind glass and ‘Step Piece’ is a performance where Acconci steps up and down from an 18” stool in his apartment for as long as he can without stopping, regularly making the audience aware of his progress via announcements. Acconci’s work is the perfect example of rebellion against the gallery space, inviting the general public to watch his performance in his studio completely removing the existence and notion of the institution.

Ward describes the first, ‘Mirror Piece’, as being “typically Conceptual in it’s abandonment of aesthetic authority.” Whilst on the other hand describes Acconci’s performance piece, ‘Step Piece, as vaguely Conceptual. Both works remove the idea of the ‘elitist’ and challenge the traditional values of what is considered ‘art’.

In 1973, Rosalind Krauss and Greogory Battock compiled the collection of writings ‘Idea Art’, which features writings by both critics and artists. Together the writings comment on the rationalisation of conceptual art.