Visual Art
BODY PARTS Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, Wed 9 Feb- Sun 13 Feb
Performance art is all too easily dismissed with a swift ‘bollocks‘. The ‘nads themselves may well be on display, along with breasts, raw meat and chickens. But its roots and history come from serious sensationalism; its values are radical, anarchist and political. From Futurism to Gilbert and George, the insistence of performance art on challenging the way things are done in art and the every day, has never been shy, and often very brave. The Royal Scottish Academy is staging a five day Performance Art Festival to celebrate the form in collaboration with the Society of Scottish Artists, with support form the National Galleries of Scotland. Events, talks, films and workshops will form the bulk of the programme, featuring Beagles & Ramsay, Firebird, Cynthia Whalen, Graeme Roger and Jefford Horrigan.
To put Bodyparfs into context, here are some crucial moments of method in the performance madness:
1910 Italian Futurist manifestoes instructed painters to ‘go out into the street, launch assaults from theatres and introduce the fisticuff into the artistic battle‘. Audiences replied with hurling fruit and veg. Carlo Carra responded with: ‘Throw an idea instead of potatoes, idiots!‘
The Black and White Dress
94 THE LIST
1960 Yves Klein painted models in perfect blue and dragged them across canvas. ‘They became living brushes . . . at my direction the flesh itself applied the colour to the surface and with perfect exactness.‘ They were accompanied by orchestra in full evening dress.
1965 German artist Joseph Beuys believed art should effectively transform people’s everyday lives. He covered his head in honey and gold leaf and took a dead hare round the exhibition of his drawings letting it touch the pictures with its paws. He said: ‘Even in death a hare has more sensitivity and instinctive understanding than some men with their stubborn rationality.‘
19705 Hermann Nitsch enacted ancient Dionysian and Christian rites in a modern context, disembowelling and displaying a slaughtered lamb, pouring buckets of blood over a nude woman or man. Nitsch believed natural aggressive instincts had been repressed and that ritualising acts was a means of releasing repressed energy.
1980 Richard Demarco invited Beuys to Edinburgh to define the spirit of German art who employed his concept of the ‘Free International University’. The exhibition was presented as part of the Demarco Gallery’s 1980 Edinburgh Arts and Beuys went on hunger strike because of Jimmy Boyle‘s removal from the Special Unit, Barlinnie to Edinburgh's Saughton Prison where he was not allowed to make his art. (Ruth Hedges)
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PAT DOUTHWAITE
The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, until Wed 2 Feb 0...
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THE 6TH STREET LEVEL OPEN Street Level Gallery. Glasgow. until Sat 29 Jan
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There are the two Crocodiles hat genti, hit/ole a screaming .vornan in 'Death of Aunt Jeno,”. a painting both funn/ and alarming. There I’, the 'l_ad/ .‘Jith Weasels‘ who catches ,’OUF attention mth her cat's e,es and bright red dress. before you spot her smouldering breasts. And there are the black tulips. blurred as if they're being .“lCECUSI/ propelled frer ‘. the others/tee |FlftOCCfYT still t:fe. 'Na/ea Pots of Fosters.
Staci“ tensions define a highly reeernrr‘ended
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