[WARNING: Some images are disturbing and NSFW] Most people think of tattooing and piercing when they think of body art, but performance art involving the human body is also considered to be a subset. This list looks at ten extremely bizarre works of modern art in which the human body is exploited. Some of the images are gruesome – you have been warned!
Nauman was educated at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of California, Davis, and became part of the burgeoning California art scene in the late 1960s. His Self Portrait as a Fountain showed him spouting a stream of water from his mouth. Nauman tested the idea of art as a stable vehicle of communication and the role of the artist as revelatory communicator
It was Serra’s first film and features a single shot of a hand in an attempt to repeatedly catch chunks of material dropped from the top of the frame. In Boomerang (1974), Serra taped Nancy Holt as she talks and hears her words played back to her after they have been delayed electronically. Serra has made a number of films concerning the manufacture and use of his favorite material, steel.
Performed both at the University Museum at Columbus, Ohio, in 1969 and in La Jolla in 1970. He ran back and forth, crashing into opposite walls fifty feet apart until he collapsed from exhaustion. The sounds of his movements were taped so that viewers were able to hear the sounds of his crashing after the event, as well as see the blood-spattered walls he had left. As on reviewer described the effect of this residue, “LeVa had truly become a ghostly presence, a body haunting space.” No images or videos are available for this item, so the clip above shows some of LeVa’s other art.
On September 17, 1970, he performed this piece at the Richmond Art Center in California. The equipment he used included a white paper that covered the floor and an eleven-foot-square mound of earth in the center of the room. He stuck plastic tubes in it, each being fifty feet long and filled with them with blood, urine, water, and milk. Fox then proceeded to lie on the earth and for six hours, attempted to levitate into the space above him. He described it with this, “I was trying to think about leaving the ground, until I realized I should be thinking about entering the air. For me that changed everything, made it work.” After he tried this he said that it left him with, “The feeling for awhile that I was out of my body.” Again no image could be found so the work above is another example of Terry Fox’s work.
This was first performed by Vito Acconci on January 15-29 1972 at Sonnabend Gallery in New York. In this piece, Acconci lay hidden underneath a ramp installed at the Sonnabend Gallery, masturbating. The artist’s spoken fantasies about the visitors walking above him were heard through loudspeakers in the gallery.
A piece that was recorded by a photographer where he appeared to cut off his own penis. Chris Burden, a fellow body artists misreported in a 1970s Newsweek Magazine that died by slicing off his penis during this performance. However, the photos had been misinterpreted. The photographs were actually of Hans Cibulka, a model and friend of Schwarzkogler. He posed with a sliced open fish covering his groin. This is what is believed to of caused the myth. Schwarkogler actually died on June 20th, 1969. He was found without any evidence for more than an accident under a window from which he fell. This generated several myths about him committing suicide and other speculations about his life.
This is one of Burden’s most well known acts. On November 19, 1971 in Santa Ana, California, he walked into F Space gallery for a pre-arranged exhibition. The crowd in the empty gallery watched as Burden’s friend stepped about 15 feet away from Burden, pulled out a loaded .22 rifle and shot him in his left arm. Although the bullet was only intended to graze Burden, he flinched at the last moment and thereby endured a more serious injury then intended.
In this 1993 performance Athey hung nude strung up to a column with long needles inserted into his head in such a manner as to represent a crown of thorns. His stated artistic intention is to achieve redemption through self-mutilation. The image above is the best one that could be found.
Burden was so influential in the realm of body art that I just had to include another of his pieces in this list. Trans-Fixed took place in 1974 at Speedway Avenue in Venice, California. For this performance, Burden lay face up on a Volkswagen Beetle and had nails hammered into both of his hands, as if he were being crucified on the car. The car was pushed out of the garage and the engine revved for two minutes before being pushed back into the garage.
Performed in 1974. In the piece, the audience was given instructions to use an array of 72 provided instruments of pain and pleasure, including knives, feathers, and a loaded pistol on Abramovic’s body. Audience members cut her, pressed thorns into her belly, put lipstick on her, and removed her clothes. The performance ended after six hours when someone held the loaded gun up to Abramovic’s head and a scuffle broke out.
@Daxxenos(168):
Contrary to what you obviously believe, masturbating is not “creating” something…in fact, it might be said to be the opposite. But what you do in your bunker is your own business. I will suggest, though, that you come out every so often, to get a breath of fresh air…does wonders for the clarity of thought to which you so aspire.
(Gotta say, I especially love the defensiveness of your first post, how a “Right Wing Reactionary” self-accuses in order to deflect a valid label…like when someone starts off a statement, “I ain’t no racist, but…”)
@Randall(166):
When one walks into an art gallery/museum, one often encounters an object which may or may not be ‘art’…it might be a humidity gauge, or perhaps a security device, or quite possibly a bona fide example of the artist’s endeavors…
Do we need to go and ask someone if it’s ‘art’? If so, the definition is predicated upon intent…and that means that if my first sincere intention in the morning is to have a smoke, drink some coffee, and create a masterpiece, then perhaps I should try to sell what I’ve created instead of flushing.
If we don’t need to appeal to the authority of the creator, then we are stuck with the damned question around our necks: what IS this thing? Is it ‘art’, or does it put out a fire?
Can it be both?
(There is, of course, a third identification possibility, but let’s just chew on these two for the moment…)
I’m sorry Randall (and while I agree with your pomposity that “art” SHOULD carry a certain standard) it is really not your decision as to what some else finds value in. Yes, a civilization carries its own standards and on that note the bunch of freaks that enjoyed cutting the woman in Rhythm O’ have their own standards, clearly different to yours, certainly mine. Fringe that they are.
I too like to enjoy works that I deem to communicate or depict something but I also enjoy a composition of, say, random shapes and colours. It is what it is and a simple experience of just enjoying how something looks is legitimate enough in itself. You clearly like to enjoy planned constructs that adhere to some kind of standards, great, over to you.
The examples in the list above are extreme but there is a group of people that enjoy it on some level. I’d hazard that many of these guys are *****wits and they just like to think they are clever but who cares? It’s their call. An expression was submitted and meant something to someone, somehow. I don’t like it, but over to them to see if they do. Good luck in telling them they don’t enjoy it.
In practice we all know that many of these guys are foolish and their artistic standard in a general sense is silly. Smearing ***** on a canvas means nothing to me but I’ll leave it to the mere thousand or so people who do want to view it to determine their own meaning.
@porkido (180): Where did I say anything about masturbating? What you do to yourself is of no concern to me.
You’re just a standard leftist. Stuck on the left side of the IQ bell curve, and too stupid to know it. You actually believe you are gifted with some sort of mental “superiority” that entitles you, in some vague fashion, to judge the rest of us.
You’re the bland dupe who floated though school with C’s in Liberal Arts, snuck through statistics with a pity grade, believes totally in AGW with the fervent passion of a Spanish Jesuit, adores “diversity”, loves public education by the leavings of the academic system, and accepts the absolute Genius of Barack Obama as the Revealed Word.
Keep in mind when you babble that us bunker dwellers, (who live next door and pay our bills, no stickers on our cars), are the ones who enlisted, learned all those interesting skills in the military, like putting 10 rounds through a plate size circle at 600 meters over iron sights, and have bought over 2 BILLION rounds in the last year…
Sleep well…
Artists who do this kind of crap are just really sick and twisted.
For the nth time, this list is WEIRD. o_O
Perfect example of rich kids with nothing to do with their idiot lives.
Hey, why aren’t the 193.774 artists that kill themselves every year not on this list ???
9 out the 10 happpened 1965-1974. Figures
you have to check out David Nebreda: http://images.google.cl/images?hl=es&rlz=1C1GGLS_es___CL360&um=1&ei=26U5S9jeB8KWtgeQ0ayqDQ&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=david+nebreda&spell=1&start=0
creepy
If you guys seriously have a strong stance on considering these things as works or art then please go check http://boards.4chan.org/b/ and tell me what you think.
Personally, I don’t buy into this “pseudo-art” BS. A guy jerking off under a ramp while people walk on by? Then that bum I saw Downtown must be a Renaissance Man. What about the recent surge of Emo kids cutting themselves up for the wrong kind of attention? Does that mean we just had a significant era in the time-line of Art?
What about “inner scroll” or the “theatre” piece where the woman put a tiny theatre around her bare breasts and walked the city streets of what… Paris was it? Or the enema painter, or the asian woman who paints with her vagina or… man there’s a ton to choose from
You can’t define art. Art is a feeling, a sensation. You finding some of these pieces disgusting invokes and stirs up controversy or emotions within you. To some people, 4chan may be a shock site but to others, it brings up a whole new culture, a new movement. Art is something that is ever-changing, it is on-going.
if it invokes a reaction, it's working. and all these people are unwittingly proving that these pieces are in fact art. If you're horrified, good. If you're shocked, good. Just because it's not a pretty *****ing flower that makes us feel warm and cuddly inside doesn't mean it's not art.
People really need to expand their horizons.
Just because they don't like it or don't "get it" doesn't mean it's not art.
These comments have made me lose faith in humanity. That is all.
1 – Rhythm O’Marina Abra
Her art was revealing the true human nature.
Oh, for f’cks sake. I was an artist half of my life, and appreciate art, but this bullsh*t is not art. This is just a stupid attempt at somebody to get attention because they were never picked in dodgeball when they were in school.
There is meaning to art, and these have no meaning other than people wanting to have a couple minutes of attention. There is no statement, there is no agenda, there is no meaning. It’s meaningless drivel because somebody didn’t want to actually learn a skill or a trade and wanted to sit around and not contribute to anything or amount to sh*t in their lifetime.
I’m also sick of hearing “oh, you can’t label art”, or “just because it’s not art to you and you don’t get it doesn’t mean it’s not art”, blah, blah, blah, STFU. Just because somebody does something stupid and calls it “art”, doesn’t mean that it is actually art either, morons.
P.S. I just took a massive, funny looking dump. I’ll call it art. It can be representative of the pile of excrement that society and our government hands to us year after year. Yep, my sh*t is art. See how easy it is?
almost the same as a freakshow…NASTY!
This doesnt appear to me as much of art as just very odd things to do. Then again, what do I know.
good job
Number 1 is the only one here that really interests me, although I see it more as a social experiment… it kind of shows how far people will go to mutilate and humiliate another person, if that person simply sits down and gives them the opportunity to do so.
One has to wonder about all the people who cut the woman up. You have to wonder why they went out of their way to cause her physical damage when that wasn’t necessary for the piece, what made them choose those harmful actions over the pleasurable ones? Why did they choose pain over pleasure when given the chance to choose?
That makes me think about human nature.
As for the rest of the pieces, I don’t really understand them, and some of them range from being laughably stupid to being downright gross and immature.