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PERFORMANCE ART: THE

IMPORTANCE OF THE ACT

Author: L. Churchill

Student Number: 50308033

Course: BA (Hons) Fine Art

2018

Jackson Pollock painting in his studio, 1949

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Contents

List of Illustrations ................................................................................................................................... 4

Abstract .................................................................................................................................................... 5

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 6

Chapter 1: The Methods of Art-Making in Performance Art ................................................................... 8

Chapter 2: The Immateriality of the Art Object ..................................................................................... 18

Chapter 3: The Usages of Sound in the Art World ................................................................................. 24

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 32

Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................... 34

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Acknowledgements

I would like to take the opportunity to thank my parents, Lisa and Andrew Churchill, for their kind

and supportive words in helping me get through this dissertation (as well as keeping me in check

whenever a breakdown arises).

I would like to thank Dr Matthew Chambers and Abi Thompson for assisting me throughout this

course.

Lastly, I would like to thank Andrew Graves for the constructive, yet honest advice and for providing

me with the resources needed to complete this dissertation.

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List of Illustrations

Figure 1: Jackson Pollock, Number 1, 1949……………………………………………………………………………………….9

Figure 2: Allan Kaprow, 18 Happenings in 6 Parts, 1959…………………………………………………………………..11

Figure 3: John Cage, Music of Changes, 1951…………………………………………………………………………………..12

Figure 4: M.C. Richards, floor plan of John Cage’s Theatre Piece No. 1 (1952), drawn for William

Fetterman in 1989……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………14

Figure 5: Yoko Ono, Cut Piece, 1964-66……………………………………………………………………………………………15

Figure 6: Nam June Paik, Zen for Film, 1962-64……………………………………………………………………………….17

Figure 7: Dziga Vertov, Man with a Movie Camera, 1929………………………………………………………………..20

Figure 8: Yves Klein, Blue Monochrome, 1957…………………………………………………………………………………21

Figure 9: Yves Klein, Anthropometries of the Blue Period, 1958-60…………………………………………………22

Figure 10: Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917……………………………………………………………………………………23

Figure 11: Robert Rauschenberg, White Paintings, 1951………………………………………………………………….24

Figure 12: John Cage, 4’33”, 1952……………………………………………………………………………………………………25

Figure 13: Morton Feldman, Rothko Chapel / Why Patterns?, 1991………………………………………………..26

Figure 14: Morton Feldman, Music for Jackson Pollock, for 2 cellos, 1951………………………………………27

Figure 15: Kurt Schwitters, Ursonate, 1922-1932…………………………………………………………………………….28

Figure 16: Bruce Nauman, Raw Material with Continuous Shift – MMMM, 1991…………………………….29

Figure 17: Neil Harbisson, Sonochromatic Records, 2015………………………………………………………………..31

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Abstract

In performance art, everything (the discourses, the literature and the artist’s intentions) is connected

by an idea of making; whether as a brief action, gesture, painterly mark or collaboration, the act of

making and the desire to make is a universal trait found in us all. Harold Rosenberg sheds light on

this subject by referring to the canvas’s subject matter as not a picture, but an ‘event’, capturing

memories and glimpses of the artist’s past life which is then shown in the act of painting.

The aim of this study is to provide the reader with a clear insight into the various discourses,

techniques and methods of art-making within performance art, and how these investigations played

a part in its development. For instance, one convention that made this possible was through a

reduction of the art object, which can be seen in Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades and Yves Klein’s

Blue Monochromes.

Another investigation to effect performance art is sound and music. Sound’s engagement with

modern art has spanned across many disciplinary areas and practices such as sound poetry,

soundscapes, painting, sculpture and film, and since the 1990s with the latest advancements in

technology, has become a mainstream medium.

Performance art also became an everyday activity as well as a liberal state of mind. Among the first

to prove this was the Happenings movement of the 1960s, producing tightly planned events that

often became spontaneous and impulsive acts controlled by the audience; blurring the line between

art and life. Additionally, elements of audience participation are also present in the live

performances of Fluxus, notably in Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1964) where members of the public are

invited to cut off sections of her dress, thus breaking the imposed ‘fourth wall’ of staged

performance that has been around for centuries.

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Introduction

“At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena

in which to act – rather than as a space in which to reproduce, redesign, analyse or ‘express’ an

object, actual or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event”

(Rosenberg, 1959).

In this quotation, Rosenberg speaks of the ‘event’ as a captured moment or place in time, as well as

a captured action. This in turn reflects on our understanding of painting and how paintings have

become “inseparable from the biography of the artist” (Harrison and Wood, p.582) attaching

themselves more to the primitive thoughts and feelings of the artist’s unconscious, which is then

conveyed in the act of painting. Furthermore, the dissertation provides the reader with a clear

insight into the various methods of art-making within the realms of performance art and discusses

the movement’s discontent with unconventional forms of art (traditional painting and sculpture) as a

springboard for new ideas and methods of art-making; i.e. using the body as a material (body art),

reducing the art object to its most minimal state (conceptual art) and testing uncertainty in

collaborative pieces (Happenings) etc.

Through this extensive research on performance art, the first chapter will be treated as a summary

of the movement, highlighting key pieces of literature, artists and artworks from other disciplines

and backgrounds that have informed its development. Furthermore, the text shows that the art of

performance is connected by an idea of making; whether as a physical act or painterly gesture in the

works of Jackson Pollock, or as a collaboration in the works of Cage, Cunningham and Rauschenberg

at the Black Mountain College, showing performance as a universal act that encourages audience

participation and chance to affect the outcome.

In the second chapter, the art object and its evolution in the art world has become immaterial, and

in some cases expendable. One of the ways this theory has been made possible is through the

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camera, producing photo-reproductions of paintings, that when viewed in a different setting; i.e.

through your computer screen, “multiplies” its meaning and “destroys” its original meaning.

Additionally, the chapter also touches on themes of spirituality, and how this sensory experience has

been made a tangible object in an art-related context, as seen in the work of Yves Klein. The last few

extracts will examine the “liberation of the idea” and how this ideology has led to the “disintegration

of art” (Schillinger, 1966) in terms of the art object.

The last chapter concludes with sound and its usage in the art world, which is made clear in the

practices of the artist, the composer and the film-maker. Likewise, the chapter’s structure can be

considered as a “review” of sound instead of as a chronology and puts sound into perspective with

the effects of globalisation and social change that began in the 1990s with advancements in

technology and the rise of the digital age (computer networks, telecommunication and the internet).

Leading on from the progression of sound, the final text illustrates how sound has further adapted

and evolved to meet the expectations of today.

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Chapter 1: The Methods of Art-Making in Performance Art

Performance in Painting

The origins of action painting, more specifically, the importance of the act, began with four

influential artists of the mid-20th century – Jackson Pollock, John Cage, Lucio Fontana and Shozo

Shimamoto. With Jackson Pollock, he would dance around his canvas freely, dripping and pouring

paint to create fields of colour and intricate latticework. John Cage, on the other hand, used

methods of chance and indeterminacy to create compositions that were realised differently every

time they were performed; Lucio Fontana adopted a more aggressive approach to his work by

slashing the pictorial surface in violent, though sometimes elegant, gestures; and Shozo Shimamoto

relied on acts of destruction to create his paintings. Through their pioneering investigations, these

four visionaries changed the way the art object was perceived and left a legacy on other artists

interested in the study of objecthood.

Leading on from the origins of the act, what made Pollock’s drip paintings iconic during the wake of

Abstract Expressionism, was the performance contained within the act. This is evident in No. 1

(1949), where a series of photographs taken by Hans Namuth, show him in his studio carefully

dripping and pouring paint onto the blank canvas in a controlled manner, in the same way, a Realist

painter would when painting a highly detailed landscape with a paintbrush. This led the artist to be

fully immersed in his work, thus breaking the invisible barrier between the art and its maker: “When

I’m painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing. It’s only after a get-acquainted period that I see what

I’ve been about. I’ve no fears about making changes for the painting has a life of its own” –

(BrainyQuote, 2017).

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In 1952, art critic and historian Harold Rosenberg published his second major piece of writing The

American Action Painters, originally published in Art News and taken from The Tradition of the New.

In the essay, he coined the term ‘action painters’ as a term used to define the artists of the time

(Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Klein) to the stylistic elements of Abstract Expressionism.

His ideas included the importance of personal confrontation with the canvas, the act of painting, and

the subordination of the art object. Leading on from these ideas, Rosenberg was particularly

fascinated by existentialism, which insists upon the importance of personal and individual

experiences and dismisses any outside forces that are a potential threat to the self. Putting this into

perspective with the action painters, (Pollock, de Kooning, Klein) Rosenberg believed they learnt

how to paint on their own accord and not from the hearsay of conventional methods. This is further

clarified by their approach to painting, which instinctively reveals that the process and art-making of

the painting are synonymous to the painter’s personality.

Taking inspiration from the thinking of Rosenberg, Allan Kaprow (American performance artist and

theoretician) published a poignant essay on the life of Jackson Pollock called The Legacy of Pollock

(1958); two years after his death in 1956. In this essay, Kaprow alters our once established

preconception of painting by suggesting that painting, or in this case the ‘act of painting’, has been

Figure 1: Jackson Pollock, Number 1, 1949

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around for more than 75 years and since then has become increasingly important, stating that the

marks, lines, and gestures attach themselves less to the represented objects of the piece and exist

more on their own terms. Furthermore, Kaprow goes on to explain to “grasp a Pollock’s impact

properly, we must be acrobats” and allow the dynamism of the work to “entangle and assault us” –

Kaprow, p.5. In other words, we, as a spectator, must place ourselves in the shoes of the artist and

see what he is seeing; we must visualise his hands and body work in unison as they dance around the

canvas. As well as this, there is no form, no structure, no beginning, middle and end to any of his

paintings, causing your eyes to dip in and out of the work at regular intervals. This idea gives the

impression of Pollock’s drip paintings being a ‘continuum’ that extends beyond the boundaries of the

canvas frame and into the dimensions of the room. Towards the end of the essay, Kaprow addresses

the scale of Pollock’s paintings and envisages them less as murals and more as

‘environments’ – these environments paved the way for the development of Happenings.

Happenings

The birth of Happenings developed prior to the legacy of Pollock and focused on the materiality of

everyday life. Happenings also embraced the plastic arts (painting, sculpture, photography and film)

and were presented to a gathering of people in real locations, in real time, but typically started off in

smaller locations for an intimate effect. Taken from Assemblages, Environments and Happenings

(first published in 1965), Allan Kaprow states that the boundaries of art and life should be kept “…as

fluid and perhaps indistinct, as possible” (Harrison and Wood, 1992), suggesting that the man-made

qualities of art and the natural qualities of life should be merged together. Furthermore, when

organising an event, the event must derive from the themes, concepts, materials and actions of any

place or period, except from the arts and its milieu – or in other words, must not rely on traditional

art aesthetics, conventions and practices. Lastly, Kaprow discusses in the third guideline that the

nature of a Happening “…takes place over several widely spaced, sometimes moving and changing

locales”. In other words, Happenings come and go; they fluctuate from one environment to the next

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without the need to come to a standstill. The art that is performed is art for the people, made with

people in mind.

An iconic piece that is a testament to this idea is Allan Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in 6 Parts. The

Happenings that took place were set under strict instruction by the artist himself, with each part

being carefully scored and annotated in hundreds of handwritten pages. The set consisted of 3

interconnecting rooms and in each room, was the props for the participant to use such as a chair, a

table, and a ladder. Kaprow gave each participant a list of instructions written out on separate index

cards, telling the performer of their allotted timeframe to complete the action. Tasks included

painting a picture, squeezing an orange, sweeping the floor, climbing a ladder, shouting a political

slogan, and sitting on a chair, all before the sounding of two bells to declare the performance had

finished. The Happenings were not rehearsed and once a Happening was over, it was never

performed again. This suggests that chance was at the centre of his creative process and played a

vital role in the outcome.

Figure 2 : Allan Kaprow, 18 Happenings in 6 Parts, 1959

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John Cage and the Uncertainty of Chance

American composer, theoretician and visionary John Cage, changed our once established definition

of fine art. His practice drew attention to unconventional methods of instrumentation and adapted

the mindset of the artist to be less dependent on their own inner psyche, and more-so on their

contemporary environment. Cage also made frequent collaborations with Merce Cunningham

(dancer) and Robert Rauschenberg (artist) on interdisciplinary projects that used dance,

performance, painting and music, as well as later embarking on his prepared piano pieces – a choice

of mundane objects placed under, above, or in between the string of a traditional piano as a way of

altering its sound (1940). Fascinated by the language of Buddhism, Cage took recordings of spoken

Chinese dialect and text symbols, chopped them up and reassembled them to create compositions

dictated by elements of chance. A piece of literature that inspired him to do this was a newly

translated copy of the I-Ching, usually known to many as the ‘Book of Changes’.

By the 1950s, Cage spent two of his summers at the Black Mountain College in North Carolina,

America, as an instructor, before becoming a resident there in 1952 alongside Merce Cunningham

and Robert Rauschenberg. The Black Mountain College is highly regarded in the modern art world

Figure 3: John Cage, Music of Changes, 1951

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for attracting budding artists and moulding them into fully fledged practitioners; a partial list

includes Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Joseph and Anni Albers, Franz Klein, Charles Olson and

Dorothea Rockburne, not excluding Cunningham, Merce and Cage as well. What sets the college

apart from others was its progressive educational system (as founded by John Dewey) and

communal way of life, essential to the experience of learning. At the latter part of Black Mountain

College’s founding, occurred the rise of Adolf Hitler and the closing of the Bauhaus School in

Germany, all at a time when the United States stock market plummeted, and the rate of

unemployment was at an all-time high (The Great Depression, 1929-1941).

Cage’s departure from the college saw the development of the Neo-Dada movement, as well as a

more experimental oeuvre, including Theatre Piece No. 1 (1952) and 4’33” (1952). These pieces

juxtaposed everyday materials and instruments in unorthodox mannerisms, and like others pieces

relied heavily on the mechanisms of chance to create music. In Theatre Piece No. 1, Cage

orchestrated the whole performance. Commonly referred to as ‘The Event’, the components in the

event were all a unique discipline; poetry readings, music, dance, photo slide projections, and Robert

Rauschenberg’s White Paintings (1951) suspended from the ceiling in a cross formation. Tasks

included Cage sat on a stepladder who lectured about Buddhism, M.C Richards and Charles Olson

stood upright on ladders at different heights whilst reciting their poems, Merce Cunningham who

danced amidst the audience whilst being chased by a barking dog, and David Tudor who played

improvised notes on a prepared piano, fitted with felt and wood between the strings, all the while

when coffee was served by four boys dressed in white. Like with 18 Happenings and 6 Parts, the

participants were left to their own devices during the allotted timeframe, but ultimately the

overarching principle of chance guided the course of events.

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The Beginnings of Fluxus and The New Media

During 1959, a small group of artists rendezvoused at The New School in New York, while a class led

by John Cage was underway. The artists banded together to form the New York Audio Visual Group,

and those associated with the group (Al Hansen, Dick Higgins and Jackson Mac Low) later

participated in the radical avant-garde movement Fluxus. Fluxus was a loosely organised group of

artists that spanned most of the globe but was predominantly centred in New York City. George

Maciunas was its founder and leader and described Fluxus as “a fusion of Spike, Jones, gags, games,

Vaudeville, Cage and Duchamp” (DiTolla, n.d.). Fluxus members believed that education was

irrelevant to our understanding of art, and furthermore, insisted that the authority of museums and

the values of the Bourgeois should be purged. At its core, Fluxus was anti-art and was against all

customs in art practice and society, using satire and public ridicule to express their intentions; to

change the balance of power in the art world.

The Fluxists brought art to the masses and scoffed at the so-called ‘high art’. The art produced was

also participatory and involved elements of chance and probability to shape its outcome, much the

Figure 4: M.C. Richards, floor plan of John Cage’s Theat re Piece No. 1 (1952),

drawn for William Fetterman in 1989.

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same as Dada, Marcel Duchamp and in the performance art of Happenings. Aspects of audience

participation can be seen in the 1970 Fluxfest Presentation of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, where

Maciunas constructs paper masks of Lennon and Ono for the audience members to wear. By doing

this, the role of the observer became the role of the performer. This adds clarity to the point made

by Maciunas, “anything can substitute for art and anyone can do it…the value of art amusement

must be lowered by making it unlimited, mass-produced, obtainable by all and eventually produced

by all” (DiTolla, n.d.). Similarly, another renowned piece that also features the involvement of the

public is Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1964-1966). In this performance, the artist is at mercy of the audience

and grants them permission to tear, shred or cut off pieces from her dress. While this is taking place,

Ono is sat in an upright position, completely still and emotionless as to not show vulnerability. In the

same way as the Fluxfest Presentation, the spectator has become a part of the art, thus breaking the

boundary between the art and its maker.

Figure 5: Yoko Ono, Cut Piece, 1964-66

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Aside from challenging the elitist art regime, the other side to Fluxus was meditative and aimed to reach an enlightened state of mind; in other words, to be pure and to not be associated with other

art institutions. A supporter of this idea was John Cage, who was intrigued by the art of Zen – a

Japanese Buddhist philosophy that focuses on meditation and the importance of the present

moment. Cage believed that the creation of art should derive from existential values, as opposed to

past everyday experiences – “In this way, art becomes important as a means to make one aware of

one’s actual environment” (DiTolla, n.d.). Using Buddhist philosophies and the influences of Cage,

the Fluxists invented a new wave of films called Fluxfilms, comprised of forty short films created by

several artists and filmmakers. For example, Nam June Paik’s Zen for Film (1962-1964) presented at

the Fluxhall, consists of a home movie screen, an upturned piano and a double bass. The film’s main

aim is to dismiss all large-scale video production and to strip film to its barest essentials, showing

nothing more than a blank screen fixed in a still position, occasionally broken by random shakes and

flecks of dust from the camera. Furthermore, American film writer and curator Bruce Jenkins, made

a compelling observation of Paik’s work, stating that it “liberated the viewer from the manipulations

of both the commercial and the alternative media” (Rush, p.25). In short, Fluxfilms brought a new

energy and playfulness to filmmaking, and its popularity and global recognition led to the discovery

of Avant-Garde Cinema II in the 1950s and 60s.

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Figure 6: Nam June Paik, Zen for Film, 1962 - 64

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Chapter 2: The Immateriality of the Art Object

This chapter will investigate into the evolution of the art object and how, typically in painting, its

meaning has become transmittable and obtainable to the masses through new advancements in

communication (the media). This is clarified in the book Ways of Seeing (1972) written by art critic

John Berger, whose criticism on art reproduction and the new media is an expansion of the ideas

addressed in Walter Benjamin’s essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936).

In the first essay, Berger stresses how European oil paintings have led themselves to be reproduced

by the camera, and so have entered the context of our own life and are seen everywhere

simultaneously.

“The painting enters each viewer’s house. There it is surrounded by his wallpaper, his furniture, his

mementoes. It enters the atmosphere of his family. It becomes their talking point. It lends its meaning

to their meaning. At the same time it enters a million other houses and, in each of them, is seen in a

different context. Because of the camera, the painting now travels to the spectator rather than the

spectator to the painting. In its travels, its meaning is diversified” – (Berger, p.19-20).

Furthermore, Berger speaks of the authenticity of paintings and how they once were a part of a

building’s interior life and religious heritage, but since the arrival of the camera, the meaning of the

original work has been ‘demystified’ or in some cases destroyed. This is achieved by the beholder of

the camera, who would alter the viewpoint of the painting, using simple techniques such as zooming

or panning depending on the context or narrative it is used for, such as a story that was to explain

certain events in a painting. Because of this, the once silent and still painting is now in constant

movement from the mechanical eye of the camera and has now ‘freed itself from the boundaries of

time and space’ – Dziga Vertov, Man with a Movie Camera (1929). Additionally, another way for the

meaning of a painting to be interpreted differently is through text or spoken word. This is made clear

in Berger’s caption of Vincent van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows (1890) telling us that ‘this is the last

picture that van Gogh painted before he killed himself’ (Berger, p.28). By doing this, the information

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used now supports his argument and has nothing to do with the painting’s original intention.

Consequently, paintings or reproductions of paintings are also affected by other images placed in

front of them or placed behind them, which is typically seen in magazines and on notice boards. The

same can be said about television, where advertisements are jostling for the attention of the viewer,

thus skewing the images’ main purpose. However, a way of avoiding this ‘false mystification’ is to

directly relate the art object to our own experiences, so that everything belongs to the same

‘language’.

Leading on from this, a film mentioned in Ways of Seeing that uses the principles of the camera is a

Man with a Movie Camera (1929) directed and edited by Dziga Vertov. The film takes place in a

Russian city and captures the life of that city in a single day without a storyline, actors and intertitles.

Belonging to a group of filmmakers known as the Kinoks, Vertov and the artists rejected all methods

of staged cinema and abolished non-documentary films as a way of turning the art of filmmaking

into something universal, something that could speak to society regardless of language or cultural

background. In his manifesto, he refers to the camera as the ‘Kino-eye’ – a piece of mechanical

engineering that can capture the flow and busyness of life perfectly, allowing for the “conquest of

space, the visual language of people throughout the entire world, based on the continuous exchange

of visible fact” (YouTube, 2017). Throughout the film, Vertov experiments with various editing

techniques such as stop motion, slow motion, fast motion, Dutch angles, split screen and montage,

which is made clear halfway through the film as the footage slows to a freeze-frame and cuts to the

editor assembling the film we are watching. These scenes explore a day in a life of documenting a

film, as well as the audience’s relation to film as they carry on with their daily activities; i.e. waking

up, getting dressed, waiting for the bus, walking the dog etc. Ultimately, Vertov demonstrates an

‘objective truth’, whereby bringing together objective footage in a subjective narrative, new

meaning can be created.

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During the decline of Abstract Expressionism, many artists rejected the secluded studio space as well

as the gallery and looked for other ways of rejuvenating their work. An artist notable for doing this

was Yves Klein, who at the start of his career tried to find a vessel for creating a ‘spiritual’ pictorial

space, and through these investigations led him to eventually work with live actions. As well as

abandoning the object as a vehicle for art-making, Klein also wanted to stress the significance of

‘immediate experience’ and free the viewer of all imposed ideas (existentialism). This can be seen in

his painting Blue Monochrome, 1957; one of the first in the series to feature his trademark pigment

International Klein Blue. In this painting, he considered the richness of the blue to hold ‘spiritual’

qualities that extend far beyond our senses such as sight and touch, as well as universally: “Blue has

no dimensions; it is beyond dimensions, whereas the other colours are not. All colours arouse

specific associative ideas, while blue suggests at most the sea and sky, and they, after all, are in

actual, visible nature what is most abstract” – (Art-quotes.com, 2018).

Figure 7 : Dziga Vertov, Man with a Movie C amera, 1929

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At the height of his career and making a departure from his monochrome paintings, Klein’s most

ambitious work, entitled The Athropometries of the Blue Period (1958-60) presents itself with an

orchestra on one side of the room and five naked models on the other. While the orchestra is being

conducted by Klein, the models cover their bodies in Klein’s signature blue paint before pressing

themselves onto large sheets of paper to create a figurative print. In this way, the models essentially

became ‘living paint brushes’. This carries on with the accompanying orchestra for 20 minutes,

playing his Symphonie Monotone (a composition of a single note) before entering a stage of

uninterrupted silence for the remainder of the performance, where everyone in the room, including

the naked women, are in a freeze-frame position under the circumstances of the artist. This marks a

shift in painting and diminishes the pictorial surface, thereby exposing the making of painting into

the dimensions of our world.

Figure 8 : Yves Klein, Blue Monochrome, 195 7

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Expanding on the notion of the immaterial sees the development of Conceptualism; a movement

centred around the idea and the process of making as opposed to the visual and formal elements of

art. Conceptual art also pushed the boundaries of modern art, challenging the institutions and

changing our preconceptions of what art is, or what art can be. Simply put, the idea became the

talking point of the 20th century, and a way for artists to showcase this was by reducing the art

object to an absolute minimum. This is referred to in Lucy Lippard’s ground-breaking essay Six Years:

The Dematerialisation of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972, where it mentions of art entering a new

phase of pure intellectualism, where the “liberation of the idea” would eventually lead to the

“disintegration of art” (Schillinger, 1966). Later, Lippard also argues that art will be free from

commodification due to its immateriality, and at the latter part explained that movements like

Minimalism reduce the aesthetic object, “defining the visual more as a jumping off point for an

immaterial, intellectual experience” - (Barcio, 2018).

One of the leading figures at the forefront of Conceptualism was Marcel Duchamp, a French-

American painter, sculptor, chess player and writer who changed the course of art history when he

Figure 9 : Yves Klein, Anthropometries of the Blue Period, 1958 - 60

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showed to the world his manufactured objects called “ready-mades”. By extracting the everyday

object from its original context and placing it in an entirely different or absurd context, such as the

gallery space, the ready-mades provoked questions from the public on the matter of what could or

should be considered an object of art. The most notorious and controversial of the ready-mades was

Fountain (1917); a men’s urinal, taken from the place it once lived and now turned on its back at a

90° angle. Written on the side it reads the name R. Mutt, with the R initial standing for Richard and

as “money bags” in French slang, while Mutt refers to JL Mott Ironworks, the New York-based

company that supplied and manufactured the urinal. Because of the angle and the way that it is

presented, the curvature of the object and the obvious pipe fixture denote themselves to femininity

and the female body (vagina), taking away from its masculine purpose. This also suggests that its

meaning has become fragmented because of its new context.

After the work had been rejected by the 1917 Society of Independent Artists for being too

“immoral”, many critics disputed the claim and said that it invested meaning and was a conscious

choice, regardless of its appearance. This is reiterated in an extract taken from an anonymous

manifesto in an avant-garde magazine entitled The Blind Man, published by Henri Pierre Roche and

co-edited by Mina Roy and Beatrice Wood in April 1917: “Whether Mr. Mutt made the fountain with

his own hands or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an article of life, placed it so that its

useful significance disappeared under the new title and

point of view - created a new thought for that object”.

Figure 10: Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917

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Chapter 3: The Usages of Sound in the Art World

Within modern art, sound can be utilised in many ways, sometimes as a medium on its own or as

part of a collaborative piece or physical installation. When sound and art merge, the possibilities

become endless and result in a chain of interdisciplinary areas such as acoustics, psychoacoustics,

electronics, noise music, sound poetry, environmental sound, soundscapes, sculpture, painting, film

or video, to name but a few of the discourses used today. Sound also advanced out of Futurism,

Dada and Fluxus as well as the performance art of Happenings, and has become commonplace in the

1990s with the rise of digital computing and the birth of the Internet. In this chapter, the artists

mentioned, and their material or immaterial approach to sound, further reinforces this point made.

In 1951, Robert Rauschenberg made a series of canvases and painted them entirely in white, entitled

White Paintings. The paintings themselves acted as screens, sensitive to the ambient effects of the

room they are placed in, recording the changes in light and shadow and picking up on dust scattered

in the air, thus affecting the temperature of the white. Rauschenberg calls these paintings ‘clocks’ as

they theoretically predicted the time of day by the number of people standing in the room and what

the weather is like outside. These works were particularly influential on many amateurs in the music

world of the 40s and 50s, among them being

John Cage, who was drawn to the

indeterminacy of the piece to later create his

most iconic work 4’33”: “When I saw those I

said, ‘Oh yes, I must; otherwise I’m lagging,

music is lagging” - (Licht, 2010).

Figure 11: Robert Rauschenberg, White

Paintings, 1951

25

In the same way as Rauschenberg’s absence of colour, Cage composed 4’33” from an absence of

music. The composition does not contain a single note and is comprised of three movements; the

first lasting for 30 seconds, the second for 2 minutes and 23 seconds, and the third for 1 minute and

40 seconds. While this is happening, David Tudor would sit at the piano in absolute silence, before

closing and re-opening the lid of the piano to mark the next movement. This stimulated mixed

responses from the audience but more importantly changed the way modern audiences listened to

music by shifting their focus less on the arrangement and more on their surroundings (the gentle

ambiences of the room, the coughs and murmurs from other people etc). Like the White Paintings of

Robert Rauschenberg, Cage was interested in the uncertainties of the atmosphere to determine the

outcome.

Another famous musical composer was Morton Feldman, who in response to the work of Mark

Rothko created a 25-minute piece inspired by the sombre tones and enigmatic qualities of his

paintings, called Rothko Chapel / Why Patterns? (1991). The piece was conducted at the Houston

Chapel in Texas with the accompaniment of several instruments including a viola, celeste, percussion

and a choir, “creating sonorities that are soft and frequently recede into silences that are carefully

Figure 1 2: John Cage, 4’33”, 1952

26

spaced throughout” (AllMusic, n.d.). As Feldman explains, he was meticulous about his “choice of

instruments” and how they “affected the space of the chapel as well as the paintings”, achieving a

sound that “permeated” across the room instead of at a fixed position. Furthermore, in some parts of

the arrangement, the music becomes sparse when the viola and percussion come to be

unaccompanied, while in other parts all the instruments join to create harmony, where the music lifts

without becoming too harsh. There are also parts where it is given more independence, where the

instruments would play at their own accord, in the same way as a Rothko painting, where the mind’s

eye would transcend past the boundaries of the canvas.

Subsequently, another piece of music Feldman worked on in conjunction with the Jackson Pollock

documentary by Hans Namuth was Music for Jackson Pollock, for 2 cellos (1951). Directed by

Namuth, with the composition played by Daniel Stern, the film lasts for 10 minutes and shows the

artist and his approach to painting. Due to lighting and budget restrictions, the film was shot outside

of Pollock’s Long Island home, where it captures the infamous scene of the artist painting on a sheet

of glass while the process is being filmed underneath. This scene, along with Namuth’s photographs

of Pollock in his studio, became a turning point in his career as it helped to demystify his ‘drip’

Figure 1 3: Morton Feldman, Rothko Chapel / Why Patterns?, 1991

27

painting technique and revealed it to be a deliberate and conscious act rather than a random

splashing of paint. In terms of its composition, the music is quite sparse in certain areas, while in

others a lot is going on, grabbing the attention of the listener with loud gritty notes from the

somewhat out-of-tune cellos. These sudden and often sporadic changes in the music are derived

from ‘action painting’, as well as match Pollock’s signature style in the Abstract Expressionist

movement: “Each utterance of the cellos has a mythic potency, a mystery to it that compliments the

painter’s style admirably” - (Keillor, 2018). In conclusion, Morton Feldman paints a clear picture of

both artist’s intentions, of their style, and of their private life through his music and allows the

listener to view their work in a whole new light.

Before Dada came the arrival of sound poetry. Sound poetry made an impact on Modernism; just as

a painter would discard representation for abstraction, composers would do the same with

harmony, replacing it with texture. For sound poets, they put aside meaning in favour of words and

language and read aloud their poems at usually small and intimate performance venues such as the

Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, Switzerland, where on July 28th, 1916 the Dada Manifesto was publicly

recited for the first time by Hugo Ball to mark the birth of the movement. Among the sound poets

Figure 1 4: Morton Feldman, Music for Jackson Pollock, for 2 cellos, 1951

28

was Kurt Schwitters, who created a piece called the Ursonate (1922-1932) which was a musical

composition of compiled letters, that when spoken read as gibberish rather than actual words:

“Fümms bö wö tää zää Uu, pögiff, kwii Ee.” (the opening line). By placing an emphasis on sound and

the human voice, Schwitters eradicated meaning and reduced poetry to its most basic level, with the

intention of mocking the art establishment as well as challenging the listener’s attitudes towards

sound poetry and vocal music: “Whether something is sound poetry or vocal music, on this account,

is the listener’s decision, not the creator’s. The interpretation and the circumstances of the

performance will probably no doubt influence that decision” - (Cochrane, 2009).

Another artist who incorporates wordplay and dialogue into his video installations is American artist

Bruce Nauman. For example, a re-creation of Nauman’s work Raw Material with Continuous Shift –

MMMM (1991) shown in the Tate Rooms at Tate Modern, London, displays a projection screen and a

monitor of Nauman’s head spinning upside-down. The sounds he is uttering are simple hums one

might use as part of a vocal exercise, but instead of being at different pitches they are of a single

tone that becomes monotonous after the video is looped. These ‘raw materials’ are treated by the

artist as common acts that an individual would go about doing in their daily life, whether arbitrary or

not. In short, Nauman sees communication as noise, and by emitting this simple noise in the quiet

Figure 1 5: Kurt Schwitters, Ursonate, 1922 - 1932

29

gallery space we become consciously aware of it. This can be analysed in the same way with

Schwitters’ Ursonate, where his idea of sound is universal; i.e. it comes and goes and is heard

everywhere, which becomes clear with his choice of words and how they might conjure up images of

objects associated with the sounds in the real world.

Since the turn of the 21st century, the study of sound in relation to the art world is changing. As well

as sound-proof headphones becoming more mainstream than ever before, other discoveries in noise

are also being conducted. This includes the spectral fingerprint, where for audio engineers, noise

comes in many colours depending on its own unique fingerprint; i.e. white, pink, red, violet, blue,

black etc. An example of this used in our daily lives is “pink noise”, where unlike the random static

qualities of white noise, pink noise can be detected within our range of human hearing and its

patterns can be seen in heartbeats, DNA, traffic flow, most electronic devices, and more importantly

in musical melodies.

An artist who experiences sound as colour as a way of life is Neil Harbisson. Born with achromatopsia

(total colour blindness) from a young age, Harbisson saw objects, people and places in greyscale.

However, in 2004, a small piece of electronic equipment – the eyeborg – changed his perception of

Figure 1 6: Bruce Nauman, Raw Material with Continuous Shift –

MMMM, 1991

30

life forever. Implanted in the back of his head, the device can track down coloured objects from the

real world and transmit them into sound waves, thus giving a reading of the object’s original colour.

Once his brain had adapted to these new conditions, he began deciphering more degrees of colour

until he could identify all 360 hues on the colour spectrum and continued to extend his observation

of colour by introducing infrared and ultraviolet to the eyeborg; both invisible to the human eye.

Along with starting and co-founding the Cyborg Foundation in 2010 with Moon Ribas, Harbisson

invented a musical scale called the Sonochromatic Scale, where each note listed corresponds to a

specific degree of colour of the colour wheel; for example, magenta is D#, blue is C#, yellow is G etc.

A body of work that best demonstrates the use of the scale are his series of Sonochromatic Records,

which are a series of scratched or damaged vinyls that have been intricately painted over according

to the colours heard within the track. What’s more, the altered records can be played again through

the eyeborg application on mobile devices, creating an entirely different composition of notes and

sounds. From these discoveries in cybernetics, sound, in relation to the natural acoustics of our

neighbourhood, is becoming more and more artificial, where everything is designed to

accommodate our lifestyle and our needs; from the sound of our ringtones to the sound of our car

exhaust system: “We’re getting this blur between what we think is real and what is actually real…The

acoustic arena is designed for us; it’s not accidental anymore” – Geoff Martin (Ouellette, 2018).

31

Figure 1 7: Neil Harbisson, Sonochromatic Records , 2015

32

Conclusion

“Young artists of today need no longer say, ‘I am a painter’ or ‘a poet’ or ‘a dancer’. They are simply

‘artists’. All of life will be open to them. They will discover out of ordinary things the meaning of

ordinariness. They will not only make them extraordinary but will only state their real meaning. But

out of nothing they will devise the extraordinary and then maybe nothingness as well. People will be

delighted and horrified, critics will be confused and amused, but these, I am certain, will be the

alchemies of the 1960s” (Kaprow, p.9, 1958).

What methods of art-making has performance art expressed, and, if so, has performance art

developed out of a level of art-making and experimentation? These assumptions have been made

aware throughout this dissertation and are present in the findings of Harold Rosenberg and the ‘act

of painting’, to the uncertainty of Happenings and the anti-art of Dada and Fluxus, where each

movement sets out to break the conventions of its ancestor by developing new materials and

processes that are seen outside of the gallery space as an act of liberation. Likewise, the styles and

concepts of performance art also tend to overlap and never fall into a specific category; Yves Klein,

for instance, which can be seen in his staged performances that have qualities of the Fluxus

movement (ritualistic and spiritual), but at the same time use the human body as a medium as seen

in his most famous work Anthropometries of the Blue Period (1958-60).

The act of making is existential. As alluded in the work of Jackson Pollock, paintings have a life of

their own, where the painting tells the artist what to paint, making it his job to express these

demands in every way he can. This act of making doesn’t conform to other methods of making and

adopts its own unique style that reflects on the personality of the painter: “painting is self-discovery.

Every good artist paints what he is”- (BrainyQuote, 2018). The act of making is reductive. Like in the

work of John Cage, most typically in his ‘silent’ composition 4’33”, Cage drew inspiration from the art

of zen and living in the present moment and radically changed the way modern audiences listened to

33

sound and music, by turning their focus on the surrounding environment. Similarly, chance and the

environment also played a part in Robert Rauschenberg’s White Paintings, where aside from the

paintings being white and are of no subject, technique or intention, they acted as a “screen” that

recorded the changing conditions of light, shadow and dust in the room. The act of making is

participatory. This can be seen in the activities of the Happenings movement in the 1960s, where

simple acts such as climbing a ladder, sitting on a chair or sweeping the floor found in 18 Happenings

in 6 Parts, can turn a tightly planned event into a spontaneous and impulsive performance controlled

by the audience. The act of making is mass-produced. This type of making can be seen in the work of

Marcel Duchamp, where his ‘ready-mades’ are manufactured objects that have been repurposed

and moved to a new place of context, changing the object’s meaning. By doing this, art became a

conscious choice by the artist, rather than an aesthetically pleasing one, and provoked the thinking

of the public on what could, or should, be accepted as art. The act of making is seen and heard

everywhere. This idea is present in Bruce Nauman’s video installation Raw Material with Continuous

Shift – MMMM (1991), where his simple and often tedious humming noises are in fact very

instinctual actions one does in their daily life without them knowing or being fully aware of it, thus

becoming a universal experience shared by everyone. Equally, these concepts, along with Haroon

Mirza’s usage of sound and light found in A Chamber for Horwitz; Sonakinatography Transcriptions in

Surround Sound (2015), (Everything at Once, Lisson Gallery, London) will feature dominantly in my

studio practice.

At the forefront of these ideas and methods of art-making is performance art. When an art

movement has exhausted its resources and concepts, people turn to performance. When social or

political ideas need to be addressed, people turn to performance. When there is a change in

globalisation and a change in our communal relationship, people turn to performance. When

frustrations in social injustice and inequality need to be released (women’s rights), people turn to

performance. When ideas need to be tested on an audience, people turn to performance.

34

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Artworks

Cage, J., Rauschenberg, R., Cunningham, M., Tudor, D., Oslon, C. and Richards, M. (1952). Theatre

Piece No. 1. [Multi-media performance and sound art] North Carolina: Black Mountain College.

Duchamp, M. (1917). Fountain. [Urinal] Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Harbisson, N. (2015). Sonochromatic Record Painting. [Acrylic on vinyl] Saatchi Art.

Kaprow, A. (1959). 18 Happenings in 6 Parts. [A gallery divided into three rooms, semitransparent

plastic sheets painted and collaged with references to Kaprow's earlier work, panels with words

roughly painted, rows of plastic fruit, artist's hand-lettered instructions and programs, vintage

posters, photographs, and videotapes - Photos and archives: Allan Kaprow Archives, the Getty

Research Institute] New York: Reuben Gallery.

Klein, Y. (1957). Blue Monochrome. [Dry pigment in synthetic polymer medium on cotton over

plywood] New York: Museum of Modern Art.

Klein, Y. (1960). Anthropometries of the Blue Period. [Oil on canvas on paper, resin] Marseille,

France: Musee Cantini.

Maciunas, G. (1963). Fluxus Manifesto. [Offset lithograph] New York: Museum of Modern Art.

Mirza, H. (2015). A Chamber for Horwitz; Sonakinatography Transcriptions in Surround Sound.

[Custom audio visual device, LEDs, speakers, foam] London: Lisson Gallery.

Nauman, B. (1991). Raw Material with Continuous Shift - MMMM. [Projector, two monitors, two

DVD players, two DVDs, two videotapes (colour, sound)] London: Level 4: Artist Rooms, Tate

Modern.

Ono, Y. (1964). Cut Piece. [Body, Clothes, and Scissors (Performance piece)] Tokyo: Sogetsu Art

Center.

Paik, N. (1965). Zen for Film. [16mm film leader (silent)].

Pollock, J. (1949). Number 1.. [Enamel and metallic paint on canvas] Los Angeles: MOCA.

Rauschenberg, R. (1951). White Painting [four panel]. [Latex house paint applied with a roller and

brush on canvas] New York: Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

Music or recording

Cage, J. (1951). Music of Changes. [A musical piece for solo piano].

Cage, J. (1952). 4'33". [Performance art, sound art, silence] First performed at Woodstock, New York.

Feldman, M. (1951). Music for Jackson Pollock, for 2 cellos. [Musical composition] Mode Records.

Feldman, M. (1991). Rothko Chapel / Why Patterns?. [Musical Composition] New Albion Records.

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Schwitters, K. (1922). Ursonate. [Sound poetry and performance] First performed at Irmgard

Kiepenheuer, Potsdam.

DVD, video or film

Jackson Pollock 51 - Directed by Hans Namuth. (1951). [film] Directed by H. Namuth.

Man with a Movie Camera. (1929). [film] Directed by D. Vertov. Kiev, Kharkov, Moscow and Odessa

(filmed in 5 cities): All-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Administration (VUFKU).