Body Art
Started: 1961
Ended: 1980
DO NOT MISS ON
THE ART STORY
 | Feminist Art Movement Page |
 | Performance Art Movement Page |
 | American Art Definition Page |
KEY ARTISTS
 | Yves Klein Quick View Artist Page |
| Yves Klein |  |
| Yves Klein attacked many of the ideas of the art world that underpinned abstract painting, audience participation, and other approaches to making and viewing art. Also, he famously used a single color, the rich shade of ultramarine that he made his own, "International Klein Blue." Art Story: Yves Klein Artist Page | ||
 | Carolee Schneemann Quick View Artist Page |
| Carolee Schneemann | |
| Carolee Schneemann is an American visual artist, known for her discourses on the body, sexuality and gender. Her work is primarily characterized by research into visual traditions, taboos, and the body of the individual in relationship to social bodies. Schneemann's works have been associated with a variety of art classifications including Fluxus, Neo-Dada, the Beat Generation, and happenings. Art Story: Carolee Schneemann Artist Page | ||
 | Jim Dine Quick View Artist Page |
| Jim Dine | |
| Jim Dine is an American painter commonly associated with the Neo-Dada and Pop art movements. In addition to showing alongside such Pop icons as Warhol, Lichtenstein and Ruscha, Dine is also well known for collaborating with Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg and John Cage on a series of "happenings". Art Story: Jim Dine Artist Page | ||
 | Dennis Oppenheim Quick View Artist Page |
| Dennis Oppenheim | |
| Dennis Oppenheim advanced the definition of art - as idea, intervention, fleeting moment, large monument - in his many creative works. Art Story: Dennis Oppenheim Artist Page | ||
 | Chris Burden Quick View Artist Page |
| Chris Burden | |
| American performance artist Chris Burden is most known for his 1970s works that placed him in extreme danger, such as being shot in the arm by an assistant or being crucified on the back of a car. Art Story: Chris Burden Artist Page | ||
 | Yayoi Kusama Quick View Artist Page |
| Yayoi Kusama | |
| Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese multimedia artist, best-known for her awe-inspiring and captivating installations of polka dots and psychedelic colors. Through her installations, poetry, paintings, performances, and film she importantly contributed to many of the post-war art movements. Art Story: Yayoi Kusama Artist Page | ||
"My work became a bridge that had to be crossed by young feminists working with their bodies."
Summary of Body Art
If life is the greatest form of art, then it seems only natural for artists to use the physical body as a medium. This is exactly what many Performance artists did to express their distinctive views and make their voices heard in the newly liberated social, political, and sexual climate that emerged in the 1960s. It was a freeing time where artists felt empowered to make art ever more personal by dropping traditional mores of art making and opted to using themselves as living sculpture or canvas. This resulted in direct confrontation between artist and audience, producing a startlingly intimate new way to experience art.
The body artists were a loose group - mostly categorized as a group by critics and art historians - which developed early within the Performance Art movement. The larger movement's main impetus was to evolve definitions of art to include situations in which time, space, the artist's presence, and the relationship between artist and viewer constituted an artwork. To the body artists, the artist's presence translated to an artist's physicality; not only did they need to personally fulfill a role in the presentation of an artwork, their own flesh and blood would become a key figure in the work as well.
Key Ideas
"The body is the medium," Marina Abramović has famously said, and in pieces like Rhythm O (1974) she used her own body as the subject to pioneer Body art.
Important Art and Artists of Body Art | |
 Artwork Images | Anthropométrie sans titre (1961)Artist: Yves Klein Artwork description & Analysis: In his Anthropometries series, Yves Klein covered nude women in blue paint and had them press, drag, and lay themselves across canvases to create bodily impressions. The piece was inspired in part by photographs of body-shaped burn-marks on the earth, which were caused by the atomic explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Klein crafted this idea into a performance piece, hosting a formal event where guests observed the nude models executing the piece. Performance; oil on canvas on paper, resin - Musée Cantini, Marseille, France |
 Artwork Images | Sex Obsession Food Obsession Macaroni Infinity Nets & Kusama (1962)Artist: Yayoi Kusama Artwork description & Analysis: In this photograph, Yayoi Kusama lies naked on a couch covered with her soft sculpture accumulations comprised of phallic shaped sprouts. According to the artist, "The reason my first soft sculptures were shaped like penises is that I had a fear of sex as something dirty. People often assume that I must be mad about sex, because I make so many such objects, but that's a complete misunderstanding. It's quite the opposite - I make the objects because they horrify me. Reproducing the objects, again and again, was my way of conquering the fear." In the background is spread a sea of macaroni pasta. She is slim and stylish, with a fashionable haircut and painted with polka dots that allow her to blend into the psychedelic scene as an intrinsic and inseparable part of the artwork. For Kusama, there is no difference between life and art and she boldly states this within a tableaux that all the while winks an eye at traditional pin-up layouts of women. Macaroni, paint, photograph |
 Artwork Images | Body, Sign, Action (1970)Artist: VALIE EXPORT Artwork description & Analysis: In 1970 feminist artist VALIE EXPORT staged a performance where she was tattooed with an image of a garter strap and stocking top on her thigh. The garter refers to the fetishizing of women's underwear and, by extension, of women's bodies. By permanently tattooing herself with a symbol of sexualization and objectification, EXPORT posits that by extension, as a woman, her whole body is a permanent subject for male visual pleasure. Tattoo |
More Body Art Artwork and Analysis:
Content compiled and written by Anna Souter
Edited and revised, with Synopsis and Key Ideas added by Kimberly Nichols
" Movement Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Anna Souter
Edited and revised, with Synopsis and Key Ideas added by Kimberly Nichols
Available from:
First published on 02 Mar 2017. Updated and modified regularly. 
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