Unsurprisingly, given that it was covering over a hundred
years of artistic activity in the medium, there was a lot of work on display in
this exhibition. With over five hundred
images on display, an engaged viewing required a determination both helped and
hindered by the gallery rooms at Tate Modern.
It was helped by my visit taking place on the last day of the
exhibition, so there were few other visitors.
Progress was hindered though by the malfunctioning (or switched off) air
conditioning, resulting in almost oppressive ‘dead’ air which was very, very
uncomfortable. Exploring the
relationship between photography and performance from the invention of medium in
the nineteenth century through to digital cameras and social media of today, from
its very inception, while examining way to push the boundaries of
representation within the media, artists have also strove to push the
boundaries of the technology available in their time.
(top) Leap into the Void, Yves Klein (1960)
(bottom) A Requiem: Theater of Gravity/Self-Portrait as Yves Klein, Yasumasa Morimura (2010)
Yves Klein’s iconic “Leap
into the Void” (1960) is an early example of this. In the photomontage Klein performs a
death-defying leap from a rooftop in a Paris suburb. In fact the image was made up of cutting two
negatives – one where on the street below where a group of the artist’s friends
held a tarpaulin to catch him as he fell, and the other of the surrounding scene
(without tarpaulin). These were then
printed together to create a seamless ‘documentary’ photograph. This was lovingly re-created 50 years later
by Yasumasa Morimura in “A Requiem:
Theater of Gravity/Self-Portrait as Yves Klein” (2010). Klein was also a painter and experimented with various methods of applying the
paint; firstly different rollers and then later sponges, created a series of
varied surfaces. This experimentalism
would lead to a number of works this artist made in the 1960s which used naked
female models covered in blue paint and dragged across or laid upon canvases to
make the image, using the models as ‘living brushes’. The performance/making of such paintings were
also documented.
(top) Yves Klein
(bottom) Carolee Schneemann
Hannah Wilke: (top) Starification Objects Series (1974)
(bottom) Portrait of the Artist in his Studio (1971)
Fight the Good Fight, Sarah Lucas (1996)
Yayoi Kusama also kept her clothes on in the documentation
of her happenings at various venues around New York in the 1960s. Here the artist is portrayed as director of
the performance, rather than participant.
However, the very inclusion of her in these photographs does in fact
record her own performativity within the happenings, which may have been
unintended.
Yayoi Kusama
An air of naivety surrounds most of the work on display in
this exhibition. From some of the
rhetoric by certain artists featured (for example, Jimmy De Sana insisted his
nudes photographed in grubby suburban interiors where inherently un-erotic, in
part due to the surroundings they were filmed in) to attempts to capture
movement and dance by a static medium in the case of Trisha Brown and Yvonne
Rainer. The capturing of performance work
by Babette Mangolte, Marta Minujin and
Stuart Brisley is similarly naïve, but epitomises an imperative to test the
limits of both artist and medium.
Lives of Performers, Yvonne Rainer (1972)
(below) Roof Piece, Trish Brown and Babette Mangolte (1971)
As the technology became more advanced and images turned
from black and white to colour, naivety is replaced by sophistication, and self-promotion
goes hand in hand with self-awareness.
Erwin Wurm’s “One Minute
Sculptures” (1997) demonstrate a wit and intelligence lacking from some of
the more recent work in the exhibition.
Erwin Wurm
In the last of the fourteen rooms the 21st
century equivalent/re-boot of Schneemann’s Eye/Body series, was Amalia Ulman’s
“Excellences & Perfections” (2014)
series. Reproduced from Instagram
postings, it was a four month durational performance taking place directly on
her personal Instagram account. Ulman
created a fictional character whose story unfolded in three different episodes
- a cute girl, sugar babe then as a fashion and style blogger. Her idea was to bring fiction to a platform
that has been designed for supposedly “authentic” behavior, interactions and
content. The intention was to prove how easy an audience can be manipulated
through the use of mainstream archetypes and characters they have seen before. It is clever, provocative and problematic as such
representation is still an almost endemic mode of self-expression for young
women on social media who seek acceptance and praise.
Excellences & Perfections, Amalia Ulman (2014)
Rrose Sélavy (Marcel Duchamp), Man Ray (1921)
Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, Ai WeiWei (1995)
Personal
highlights were Marcel Duchamp’s alter-ego Rrose Sélavy photographed by Man Ray
in 1921 which I have seen reproduced many times in academic texts and Ai WeiWei's "Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995). Also, a collection of work by Francesca
Woodman, an artist I was completely unaware of, greatly moved me. While she tread the feminist minefield of
featuring young women (including herself) naked, most of the bodies were
blurred due to movement and long exposure times in her photographs. The figures merged with their surroundings or
their faces were obscured. The aesthetic
considerations in her compositions were ethereal and beautiful. Sadly, she committed suicide at the age of
just 22 in 1981. She never gained
critical acclaim or attention during her lifetime, and it seems that the
inclusion of so much of her work in one group exhibition, attests to a reversal
of opinion since her death.
(below) Untitled, Francesa Woodman (c. 1975-1980)
This was an
exhausting, but very thought-provoking exhibition. Ironically at the entrance there was a “no
photography” sign on the door which was clearly ignored given that there are to
date over 1,000 posts on #performingforthecamera…
