Universal Principles of Art

59 PERFORMANCE ART

THE ARTIST BECOMES THE ARTWORK

Performance art is a modern form in which the artist is the focus for a live interaction with an audience. The form is extremely open and may incorporate speech, singing, acting, dance, props, multimedia displays, other performers, music—in fact, almost anything the artist cares to dream up. Such events generally differ from theater in that they rarely seek to simply entertain, nor do they follow traditional conventions of stage narrative. On the other hand, there are times when performance art is indistinguishable from such mainstream forms as dance, stand-up comedy, poetry reading, mime, and circus.

Although the term “performance art” wasn’t coined until the 1960s, the practice goes back to ...