The body

The late Sixties was a period of change in America (a civil-rights revolution took place while fighting a war of attrition in Viet-Nam thousands of miles away). Pop Art, Conceptualism, and Minimalism had taken New York by storm. In the midst of this commotion, a group of young artists found that they could use their bodies as vehicles to express themselves. They borrowed from Jackson Pollock's heroic gestures, feminism, neo-Dada happenings, and avant-garde theater (such as Antonin Artaud's theater of cruelty). Their aim was to bring the human body to the center of the political, social, and artistic debates. They turned into painting bodies, (like in the works of Yves Klein or Jackson Pollock), gesturing bodies (in the actions of Bruce Nauman, Joan Jonas and Eleanor Antin, or transgressive bodies, (as in the rituals of Ana Mendieta, Hermann Nitsch and Chris Burden).

Marina Abramovic
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This piece, entitled Balkan Baroque won Abramovic a 1997 Venice Biennale Award. She spent four days cleaning 1,600 cattle bones while singing melodies from her mother country, Yugoslavia. Abramovic's performance happened during the war in Kosovo between Serbia and NATO.

Yves Klein

Eleanor Antin

Tracey Emin

Janine Antoni

Yayoi Kusama

Hermann Nistch

Bruce Nauman

Ana Mendieta