Performance Art

Anderson was a working performance artist in New York through the 1970s and pressed a small run of the song—an idiosyncratic, vocoder-driven piece that sounded unlike anything on pop radio. Thanks to a push from influential British DJ John Peel, the song became an unexpected hit, propelling Anderson (and her art) into the mainstream.

The movement’s early performances were absurd cabarets featuring experimental poetry, avant-garde music, and maskwork. Much of it was reckoning with the growing deathcounts of World War I, with work that often lampooned Western imperialism and supposed rationality.

Paul Reubens' character Pee-wee Herman would become a sensation with his 1986 children's show "Pee-wee's Playhouse," but in 1979 he appeared as the hilariously naive character on "the Dating Game." It's not clear if the show (or its audience) understood what they were seeing.

Performance art defies traditional boundaries, existing as a dynamic, live medium where the artist’s actions—and sometimes the audience’s—become the work itself. Emerging in the early 20th century with movements like Dadaism, performance art has continually evolved to provoke reflection and challenge cultural norms.

Columbia University undergrad Emma Sulkowicz became an overnight sensation with their senior thesis performance art piece "Carry That Weight." Emma developed the piece after reporting having been sexually assaulted by another Columbia student to the school, which declined to find that student responsible. In "Carry That Weight," Emma carried her mattress everywhere with her for the entirety of her senior year, calling it an “endurance performance art piece.”

Works by the post-WWII Japanese artist collective Gutai are widely considered a precursor to Western performance art of the 1960s and 1970s. The word “Gutai” means “concrete” in Japanese, referring to the concrete ways the artists’ bodies were used to create their works. Gutai members like Kazuo Shiraga, who painted with his feet to express the movement of his process, are thought to have influenced later artists like Jackson Pollock.

David Sedaris may be known for his writing now, but when he was in college, he thought his future was in the art world. Specifically, the performance art world. In this episode of NPR’s This American Life, Sedaris shares a selection of moments from his career as an artist, each more embarrassing than the last. The kicker? Being heckled from the audience—by his own father.

Through centering on the human body, performance art can surprise and shock us. This rundown of 30 of its practitioners highlights their individual art and selects an image to showcase their specific style. While some are more clever or conceptual, many are viscerally shocking, including artistic nudity and, in some cases, graphic violence.

The artist programmed the camera to capture one image per minute of his daily life. He explained that the project was meant to document his past—in a rather literal way—as it slipped away from him, in a mode that gestured at both surveillance and the radically objective nature of photos. Viewers can expect an immersive installation featuring thousands of mundane images transmitted to a website, challenging traditional photography and exploring the intersection of public and private information.

When you see someone slathering themselves in maple syrup or sitting silently in the corner of a gallery surrounded by yogurt containers, it’s easy to wonder whether there’s anything that can’t be considered performance art. This Artsy piece speaks to various performance artists and attempts to define some guardrails for the medium. The main takeaway? Intention and interpretation are what separate real performance art from people who are just covered in syrup.