
Body Art Artworks
Started: 1961
Ended: 1980

Artworks and Artists of Body ArtThe below artworks are the most important in Body Art - that both overview the major ideas of the movement, and highlight the greatest achievements by each artist in Body Art. Don't forget to visit the artist overview pages of the artists that interest you. | |
![]() 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 |
![]() Artwork Images | Einhorn (Unicorn) (1970-72)Artist: Rebecca Horn Artwork description & Analysis: Early in Rebecca Horn's career she contracted lung poisoning from repeatedly inhaling toxic materials in the making of her art. She was sent to a sanitarium for two years to recover and during this time she became fascinated by the hospital setting and the limitations of the human body. She began experimenting with making "body extensions" as a coping strategy in which she would use medical materials such as bandages, trusses, and prostheses to create wearable sculpture. Horn said about her debilitating experience, "you crave to grow out of your own body and merge with the other person's body, to seek refuge in it." These pieces were manifestations of the desire, which allowed Horn to explore her personal space and how the body could interact with its physical environment. Material body extension; performance; photographic documentation - Tate, London |
![]() Artwork Images | Shoot (1971)Artist: Chris Burden Artwork description & Analysis: Shoot is the seminal piece for which Chris Burden sealed his membership in infamy. In 1971, the highly provocative artist asked a friend to shoot him with a .22 rifle from a distance of 15 feet in a public gallery setting. The bullet was originally supposed to nick the side of Burden's arm, but the shooter was slightly off target and the bullet went through the arm instead. This piece presented a literal demonstration of what happens when a person is shot so that the audience could experience it live. The viewer was forced to experience visceral emotions such as shock while mentally reconciling the moment in front of them. In describing the piece, Burden stated that "it was really disgusting, and there was a smoking hole in my arm." .22 rifle and bullet - N/A |
![]() Artwork Images | The Conditioning (1973)Artist: Gina Pane Artwork description & Analysis: Gina Pane was a French artist who was a key member of Art Corporel - the French body art movement she helped found in the early 1970s. One of her most famous works is The Conditioning, where she lay on a metal bed frame above lit candles for half an hour. This was an extremely painful experience for the artist, and the audience could see her physical suffering in the automatic pain responses of her body, such as flinching and wringing her hands. Critic Sam Johnson argues that, "while the candles and bed suggested ideas of sexual love and pleasure, the manner in which Pane positioned her body around these objects caused her harm and surreptitiously threw up questions around the fixed notions of pleasure and pain." Pane's work draws the viewer's attention to the way in which female sexual experience (especially in the female loss of virginity) is regularly associated with pain and suffering in common formulations. Candles, metal bed |
![]() Artwork Images | Imagen de Yagul (1973)Artist: Ana Mendieta Artwork description & Analysis: Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta was best known for over 200 pieces of "earth-body" artworks in which she utilized a collaboration between her body and the earth as a sculptural medium. She was on the forefront of the feminist art movement and explored themes of violence, loss, existence, and belonging. Imagen de Yagul was the first in Mendieta's renowned series of silhouette portraits in which she would trace the outline of her body in various locations between Mexico and Iowa and then photograph the imprints left in her absence. It consists of her nude body lying within an open Zapotec tomb in the ancient city of Yagul as flowers, leaves and other elements of nature envelop and obscure her - homage to the inevitable and organic cycles of life and death. It is the only of the series in which her body remains in the resulting photograph - the rest resembles burnt or scarred portraits in the land. Because Mendieta died a tragic death, falling from the window of an apartment building she shared with her artist husband Carl Andre, these works lend an eerie foretelling of her fate. Lifetime color photograph |
![]() ![]() | Rhythm 0 (1974)Artist: Marina Abramović Artwork description & Analysis: In Rhythm 0, multiple aspects of Body art were combined to forge one of the most memorable performance pieces in history. Audience participation was central to the piece and sparked an interesting sociological glimpse into mob mentality. It covered the gamut from positive to negative human behaviour, touched upon ideas of pain, pleasure, shock and submission and positioned the body as equal parts canvas, medium, and object of manipulation - in both sexual and suffering lights. 72 materials of pleasure and pain including a gun, a bullet, a comb, a saw, olive oil, cake, wire and sulphur |
![]() Artwork Images | S.O.S. Starification Object Series (1974-75)Artist: Hannah Wilke Artwork description & Analysis: This is one of Wilke's best-known works; it constitutes a series of photographs of the artist posing topless much like a glamorous pin-up girl (that Wilke herself had all the attributes to be) in which she parodies traditional representations of "femininity". The difference between these photographs and typical glamour shots is that Wilke has created tiny sculptures out of chewing gum and stuck them to her body. The gum is formed into vulvar shapes, a shape that she explored in other media throughout the 1960s. The title, "Starification" is a neologism that refers to a concept of creating a "star" or celebrity. The term also recalls "scarification," which could refer to the coming-of-age scarring rituals undertaken in some non-Western cultures or the numbered tattoos on Holocaust victims, while also suggesting a relation between women's bodies and wounds/vulnerability. By juxtaposing ideas of celebrity and scarring, Wilke points to the complexity of responses to images of women's bodies. Photographs and chewing gum - Museum of Modern Art, New York |
![]() Artwork Images | Interior Scroll (1975)Artist: Carolee Schneemann Artwork description & Analysis: Carolee Schneemann undertook this famous performance (in front of an audience of mostly female artists) at an exhibition of paintings and performances entitled Women Here and Now. Schneemann undressed until she was wearing only an apron, proceeded to apply paint to her body, and read from her own book Cézanne, She was a Great Painter (1975). She then took off the apron and pulled a scroll of paper from her vagina while reading the contents aloud. The text was drawn from a film made by Schneemann in which she recorded a male filmmaker articulating the traditional pigeonholing of intuition, emotion and certain bodily functions as "female" and logic and rationality as "male." Performance |
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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
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First published on 02 Mar 2017. Updated and modified regularly.
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