Week 1 Reading Response

The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism

F.T. Marinetti

This reading began with Marinetti explaining how the idea of futurism was born. This form of performance art is based upon forgetting about the past completely. After explaining its origins he goes on to list the Manifesto of Futurism. Number nine of the manifesto states, “time and space died yesterday, we already lived in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed.” This statement made sense to me in that creating this measurement of time we have conjured a speed that cannot be slowed down or sped up. In sense we are in constant motion in regards to time. When he says that it is pointless to worship the past I think that might be taking it too far. If we don’t learn from the past we won’t make any sort of progress. Studying art from artist prior to our generation allows us to learn from them. While viewing some of the art I noticed it very closely resembles cubism. Personally I liked Dynamism of a Soccer Player. The style of art caught my attention and represents futurism in a positive aspect.

http://webexhibits.org/colorart/futurism.html

Interview with Allan Kaprow

By John Held Jr.

This interview with Allan Kaprow, the father of modern movement in performance, by John Held Jr. in my opinion was very interesting to read. At the same time I was reading this interview I was doing research on John Cage and it was very interesting seeing his affect on other important artist of modern times. The Avant-Garde composer was in part responsible for Kaprow’s greatest pieces of art. Kaprow was known for giving the title “happenings” to this performance art. He said happenings were his way of stepping out of the canvas. I definitely agree that happenings can be considered at way to express oneself with out the use of a canvas. This new from of performance art changed the way art used to be. It was a new form of art for a new age of artist. They also say that the idea of going farther was a heritage of modernism. This is true, however, I don’t feel that this trait can be isolated to just modernism. This is common from art throughout history. It has always been our nature to evolve our ideas.

http://www.ettc.net/njarts/details.cfm?ID=543

Performance Art

By Martha Wilson

This article speaks about how performance art was created and how. They say that early Avant-Garde visual artists were inspired by a poet by the name of Stephane Mallarme. Performance art usual seems to be looking for a way to change the world or affect people in some way. I feel that she is correct in stating this. Most of the time a performance artist is looking to make some kind of impact on the viewer rather than some painters may just paint what they want to see. A performance artist is always looking for a way to affect the viewer. Bury the Veil is a performance piece that lasted 50 hours. This performance would most definitely affect the audience in some way or another. A 50 hour performance would evoke some kind of response from the viewer. At one point in the article she says that the piece need not be fabricated. I feel that this is true for some pieces of art, but performance is not one of them. Without the response from the viewer the piece is not a performance at all. Jack Bowman from www.bright.net says that being a performance it is difficult to censor the piece. This is probable what was responsible for the extreme responses that were evoked from the audience.

http://www.bright.net/~dapoets/performa.htm