Some Relations between Conceptual and Performance Art – Summary

 Frazer Ward

Conceptual art can be considered as a form that focuses more on the underlying conditions of art as language and analysis of meaning as opposed to the audience’s aesthetic experience with the work. Over the years there has been debate surrounding the absolute definition of conceptual art, which still continues today. Essentially this form undertook the removal of traditional elements of aesthetic expression from art.

 Performance art is a type of art in which some kind of activity takes place in a certain space at a certain time, often engaging the artist. The audience plays a large role in this form, whether that is purely observation or a more interactive piece. One aspect of performance art that separates it from many other forms is that it is a temporal action or event which has a definite beginning, middle and finish.

Conceptual and performance art have often coincided in many works, with particular increase during the late 1960s and early 1970s. It has been suggested that such an overlap has produced thought that performance art is in opposition to the critical investigation conceptual art takes into the objects status and presence in a work. Performance art can also be viewed to challenge the limitations conceptual art poses. One such limitation is the notion of rationality when viewed from within the conceptual framework.

A collection of writings was put together by Rosalind Krauss and Gregory Battcock which included critics’ and artists’ writings about conceptual art in 1973 entitled Idea Art. This collection can be viewed as the rationalisation of conceptual art and an attempt to make it less ‘elitist’ and more understandable for the audience considered as ‘nonart’ by demystifying the underlying conditions and language of the works. 

Summary - Interventions

Artists often utilise instillation in attempt to move away from the traditional art making practices and to build a relationship between the artwork and its surroundings. As a medium sculpture allows the audience to view the work spatially as well as conceptually. In a way interventions allow the artist to confront the viewer due to the confusing nature of them as “an outgrowth of art that refuses to abide by conventional practices” Buren’s work Within and Beyond the Frame (1973) manipulates the notion of boundaries, going ‘beyond the frame’ he leaves his work open for interpretation to his audience. During the 1960’s the art world saw drastic changes. Artists were in many cases working against the traditional art forms and art making practices, pushing forward controversial and experimental techniques and thought forms. Not only the artists changed but the values of museums and galleries shifted also. No longer was it something admired, but by contrast, it was now critique. The birth of site-specific works made museums futile in what they were traditionally used for. Additionally this allowed for artists to develop work out of reach of the traditional art world and the structures and limitations that went hand in hand with it.

Ultimately the aim of interventions is to reduce or remove the traditional conventions of art from instillations. Artists such as Bruce Nauman, Carl Andre and Richard Serra are all minimal artists that explore this this notion within their work. Serra and Nauman’s works both take on a more aggressive approach to audience participation; in a way they are forcing the viewer to engage with the works. A juxtaposition can be seen with the works of Nauman and Serra when compared to the works of Andre; Andre’s works unlike Nauman and Serra give the audience a choice as to whether they wish to engage, or not, with them.

Enchantments summary

Enchantment installations can be categorised as those that fully surround and envelop the viewer on a physical and psychological level, transporting them to a phantasmagorical realm far removed from the architecture of the site.  Autonomous environments are created dependent on the suspension of disbelief, rendering the site of enchantment installation arbitrary.

Modern explorations of enchantments were pioneered by Kurt Schwitter, whose work ‘Merzbau: Cathedral of Erotic Misery’ involves the invasion of every surface of his home with three-dimensional formalist structures, creating a large-scale physical field of art in which the viewer is completely immersed. The combination of a wide range of materials and the interaction with the architecture renders this a Gesamtkunstwerk – a synesthetic culmination that underpins installation art. Schwitter’s concept was one which could be transposed quite easily to another location, detracting significance from the work’s interaction with the site.

            Schwitter’s work was paralleled by installation experimentation within Dada, Bauhaus, Russian Constructivism and Dutch De Stijl, and was famously utilised by Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dali. Duchamp’s works ‘1200 Bags of Coal’ (1938) and ‘Etant donnes’ (1946-66) subvert and harness the gallery space as a means of luring the viewer in, as only with their engagement and connection will the artwork be complete. Dali’s ‘Le Taxi Pluvieux’ (1938) and ‘Dream of Venus’ (1939) created worlds in which the surreal, bewitching, perplexing and frightening were to dominate above all else, including the space in which it was situated.

            With the construction of Disneyland in 1955, a fascinating comparison was drawn between the ‘world of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy’ created by Walt Disney purely for leisure purposes, and the immersive, theatrical nature of enchantment installations. These expectations of entertainment within art led to the expansion of the tableaux format to the creation of live, performative ‘happenings’, led by artists such as Alan Kaprow. Again, the focus of these phenomena was viewer engagement and involvement to further the belief in the artist’s manufactured situations.

            The creation of contained worlds is continued by Ilya Kabakov, in his use of devices such as doors and walls separating the space from the gallery; Johnathan Borofsky in his works’ movement around and across adjacent surfaces – a principle survived through contemporary video installation artists. 

In all of these enchantments, through their creation of foreign worlds in which to encapsulate the viewer, the physical space it they are situated in is forgotten, and as a result, easily changed.