ARTH 523

History of Performance Art

History of Performance Art is designed as an advanced upper-level seminar that investigates the international, historical developments in Performance Art after World War II. It considers the experimental strategies and ideological aims of visual artists who used their bodies as the primary vehicle of expression, information, communication, and social change. Performance Art has had the dubious distinction of being the most censored art medium, and since the 1960s artists have been continually arrested and fined for their work. This is a highly significant social fact, one that draws attention to Performance Art's particularly disruptive aesthetic codes and materials-emphasizing presentation over representation; intersubjective, human bodies over inanimate objects; and temporarily over spatiality

Units: 3.0