Performative monuments: The rematerialisation of public art - Paperback

by Mechtild Widrich (Author)

This book answers one of the most puzzling questions in contemporary art: how did performance artists of the '60s and '70s, famous for their opposition both to lasting art and the political establishment, become the foremost monument builders of the '80s, '90s and today? Not by selling out, nor by making self-undermining monuments. This book argues that the centrality of performance to monuments and indeed public art in general rests not on its ephemerality or anti-authoritarian rhetoric, but on its power to build interpersonal bonds both personal and social. Specifically, the survival of body art in photographs that cross time and space to meet new audiences makes it literally into a monument.

The argument of the book spans art in Austria, the former Yugoslavia, and Germany: Valie Export, Peter Weibel and the Viennese Actionists (working in Austria and abroad), Marina Abramovic, Sanja Ivecovic and Braco Dimitrijevic (working in Yugoslavia and abroad), and Joseph Beuys and Jochen Gerz (working in Germany and abroad). These artists began by critiquing monumentality in authoritarian public space, and expanded the models developed on the streets of Vienna, Munich, Rome, Belgrade and Zagreb to participatory monuments that delegate political authority to the audience.

Readers interested in contemporary art, politics, photography and performance will find in this book new facts and arguments for their interconnection.

Front Jacket

A man selling kebabs in the shadow of a papier mâché tree; a woman standing with a small stage built around her breasts while people wait their turn to touch them; another woman projecting snapshots of Belgrade with the official buildings painted out: what do these events have in common? All are works of public art. And all take a cue from the fugitive art of performance. The most forceful monuments of the last few decades, whether built to last on national malls or flashed as signs of protest, were in fact designed by performance artists. This book argues for the conceptual significance of performance, and of a performative model of art, to the revival of the public monument in the wake of the Second World War and the partition of Europe. Through detailed studies of artists working along these ideological fault lines, including Valie Export, Günter Brus, Marina Abramovic, Sanja Ivekovic, Joseph Beuys, Jochen Gerz and Santiago Sierra, it argues that it is not the subjective, anti-authoritarian rhetoric of performance that makes it public art, but its power to build social bonds both personal and political. Readers interested in contemporary art, politics, photography and performance theory will find in this book new facts and arguments concerning their interrelation.

Back Jacket

A man selling kebabs in the shadow of a papier mâché tree; a woman standing with a small stage built around her breasts while people wait their turn to touch them; another woman projecting snapshots of Belgrade with the official buildings painted out: what do these events have in common? All are works of public art. And all take a cue from the fugitive art of performance. The most forceful monuments of the last few decades, whether built to last on national malls or flashed as signs of protest, were in fact designed by performance artists.

This book argues for the conceptual significance of performance, and of a performative model of art, to the revival of the public monument in the wake of the Second World War and the partition of Europe. Through detailed studies of artists working along these ideological fault lines, including Valie Export, Günter Brus, Marina Abramovic, Sanja Ivekovic, Joseph Beuys, Jochen Gerz and Santiago Sierra, it argues that it is not the subjective, anti-authoritarian rhetoric of performance that makes it public art, but its power to build social bonds both personal and political.

Readers interested in contemporary art, politics, photography and performance theory will find in this book new facts and arguments concerning their interrelation.

Author Biography

Mechtild Widrich is Professor in Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago