Honestly, I found the Kaprow mirror activity to be silly. If I tried hard, I'm sure I could invent some metaphorical meaning for the mirror/reflection/image aspect of the activity and create a narrative surrounding it that invests it with deeper meaning. But, to do that wouldn't be an honest reflection of my actual experience of the activity. I must confess I have never been a big fan of performance art--it really has just never resonated with me. It often comes across as very self-indulgent and is often so oblique that it fails to engage the average viewer.
The broad philosophy of performance art (at least as it originated in Dadaism) is to break down the barriers between art and life; to take art out of the galleries into the broader world. Performance art has never seemed, to me, to accomplish this "breaking down of barriers" very effectively. Rather than being a democratizing force that makes art more accessible to the viewer, performance art often seems to create more barriers because people just don't get it--there is a sense of division between the artist and the public that is even more profound than with "object" art. With "object" art, the work can be appreciated on many levels, and even if the viewer does not grasp any deeper meaning that may be present in the work, the visual elements of the work can be appreciated on their own terms (craftmanship, composition, etc.). Therefore, the viewer does not feel entirely shut out of the experience of the work.
With performance art, the artist needs an audience (I'm sure some artists would argue with this--e.g Kaprow brushing his teeth--but if there is no audience, how or why is it a peformance?)--but the audience is often left wondering what the point of the performance is. Performances such as standing in a public square and cutting off all your hair or sitting on a stage and having the audience cut off your clothes with scissors beg to be infused with meaning and interpretation, but the intended meaning often is so elusive as to be off-putting to the general public. If the meaning is unimportant, and the purpose is not to entertain (otherwise it would be categorized as theatrical) and there is no visual object to appreciate, I'm left with little understanding of its value. If performance art is simply a means of self-reflection for the artist, like yoga or meditation, I don't understand the purpose of the public performance. These thoughts reflect my present understanding and responses to performance art, which I readily confess are not highly educated opinions, as I have not had wide exposure to the medium. I am prepared for my ideas about it to change with further exposure to performances or writing about the medium that will enlighten me a bit more about it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment