Performance Art in New York: Approaching the Eighties

PERFORMANCE ART IN NEW YORK Approaching the Eighties Peter Frank Throughout the United States, but especially In New York, artists have been reassessing their use of fashionable media. The heretofore irresistible allure of video, film, performance, installations, and even artists' books and periodicals has dimmed somewhat. All these popular formats are still being examined and exploited, but few artists continue to consider them as the only viable media left. In fact, there is a growing body of artists, young and old, who create paintings and performances, sculptures and films, and/or prints and books with equal emphasis and concern. This indicates a healthy re-examination of what performance, video, books, paintings, etc., are: nothing more than available formats. Artists are becoming interested In aspects of aesthetic communication beyond - or at least in addition to - the purely formal, self-reflexive aspects of their work. This can be interpreted as a resurgence of content in art, but it is more complex than that. It is, at least in part, a loosening of our formalistic appreciation of modes and media as movements (e.g., Video Art, Performance Art, Book Art). The medium is no longer the whole message, but just a part. As Douglas Davis insists, the video camera is equivalent only to a pencil, not to a manifesto. 125 Thus, there is an Increasing perception of the performance format as just one possibility or cluster or possibilities among many media. This perception has led artists to explore the modes that exist between media. This exploration , in turn, has renewed interest in the earliest, heavily intermedial performance styles: Happenings, Fluxus, visual and sound poetry, and the expanded and blended modes of music and dance introduced by revered but still not fully understood figures like John Cage and Merce Cunnningham . Artists with backgrounds in the traditionally discrete arts have taken greater and greater interest in expanded-arts formats and potentials: when, for Instance, a composer of electronic music becomes intrigued more by the gestures of dancers, artists, and performers than with the continuing purity of electronically generated sound, that artist is now more likely than ever to seek a synthesis of his or her native medium with the other, newly attractive media. The versatility of a single creative individual among several media is nothing new: "poly-artists" (to use Richard Kostelanetz's term) have existed at least since Michelangelo. What is new is the desire of multi-talented artists to apply their various talents to the invention of a single, unified artwork . This desire has been infrequent enough among European artists until now, but among North Americans-especially those working in or oriented toward the New York scene - the idea of aesthetically heterogeneous works of art has been a heresy against the formalist strategies predominant In all the arts in New York. This is no longer the case. In the late seventies , more and more modes and media became available to more and more artists. Or, perhaps I have it backwards: more and more artists became available to more and more modes and media. The medium is no longer the whole message, but just a part. As Douglas Davis insists, the video camera is equivalent only to a pencil, not to a manifesto. New York being the style-conscious marketplace that it is, artists are fusing the media one medium at a time. Each year there is a surge of interest among artists, dealers, curators, and critics in a different single possibility. This began with the Introduction of video at the end of the sixties, continued with performance, focused recently on books, and this year promises to concentrate on music. Artists have been incorporating music into their static and kinetic visual works for years, even centuries, but artists are 126 The solipisticorientation of body art and autobiographicalart can be seen as the end productof single-personperformance. now singing their own songs, playing instruments, and even producing recordings and radio broadcasts. What differentiates this current development from past coordinations and blends of sound and image - ranging from grand opera to experiments in synesthesia - is that neither sound nor Image play a role secondary to the other. Artists who take up music in the current climate...