It's Not Personal: Post 60s Body Art and Performance

Description

How does something as potent and evocative as the body become a relatively neutral artistic material? From the 1960s, much body art and performance conformed to the anti-expressive ethos of minimalism and conceptualism, whilst still using the compelling human form. But how is this strange mismatch of vigour and impersonality able to transform the body into an expressive medium for visual art? Focusing on renowned artists such as Lygia Clark, Marina Abramovic and Angelica Mesiti, Susan Best examines how bodies are configured in late modern and contemporary art. She identifies three main ways in which they are used as material and argues that these formulations allow for the exposure of pressing social and psychological issues. In skilfully aligning this new typology for body art and performance with critical theory, she raises questions pertaining to gender, inter-subjectivity, relation and community that continue to dominate both our artistic and cultural conversation.

Susan Best is Professor of Art Theory and Fine Art at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. She is the author of Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-garde and Reparative Aesthetics: Witnessing in Contemporary Art Photography (Bloomsbury, 2016).

The structure of the book is beautifully simple, an elegant mirroring of her subject, with chapters revolving around works of art comprising one, two or three or more bodies ... While It's Not Personal: Post 60s Body Art and Performance is relatively concise, its selection of works (ostensibly) subjective, and largely Australian, Western European and North American in origin, there is an enormous amount in it to be considered and digested. Known for the intelligence and sensitivity of her prior work, Best's new book is no exception. * Art Monthly *