Body Art is an international genre of art in which the artist's body is integral to the artwork. It was an offshoot of the avant-garde performance art movement of the 1960s and reached a height during the 1970s, rising from a wave within the art community to reject art practices that were viewed as commoditized. Body Art treats the artist's own body as a material or medium for the creation of an artwork: the body might be a paintbrush, covered in paint and gesticulating on a canvas, the body might be the subject of extreme exertion, or even more commonly, the body might be the object of altera … (read more)

Body Art is an international genre of art in which the artist's body is integral to the artwork. It was an offshoot of the avant-garde performance art movement of the 1960s and reached a height during the 1970s, rising from a wave within the art community to reject art practices that were viewed as commoditized. Body Art treats the artist's own body as a material or medium for the creation of an artwork: the body might be a paintbrush, covered in paint and gesticulating on a canvas, the body might be the subject of extreme exertion, or even more commonly, the body might be the object of alteration or mutilation. Some historical precedents of Body Art may be found in ritualized tribal practice; there is significant historical precedent drawn from tribal practice found in Native American and African cultures.

Amongst the pioneers of the Body Art movement were the artists known as the Viennese Actionists: Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. Nitsch's controversial Aktion series of the late 1950's depicted theatrical scenes in which Nitsch and his colleagues used blood, entrails, and animal carcasses in ritual performance. Through repeat performances, Nitsch was imprisoned for the scandal and blasphemy of his work. Schwarzkogler's Aktion 2 depicted fish being sliced while lying over a man's crotch, fueling unsubstantiated rumors that the artist had castrated himself during the performance. Mühl and Nitsch's 1963 work, "Degradation of a Female Body, Degradation of A Venus" brought scrutiny to the issue of genital mutilation.

In body artist Chris Burden's career-marking performance, Shoot (November 19, 1971), the artist invited friends to his studio to witness his assistant to shoot him in the arm with a .22 rifle. "The bullet went into my arm and went out the other side. It was really disgusting, and there was a smoking hole in my arm," recounts Burden. The artist explains that much of the goal of the piece was to explore and confront the natural fear of receiving a gunshot.

Marina Abramovic, a leader of the body art and performance art front, explains that "the body art movement of the seventies... had a lot to do with pain and injuriousness in order to push the body to its border, even to the border between life and death." In one of her best-known pieces, Rhythm 0 (1974), she placed herself passively in the keeping of the audience, providing them with seventy-two objects to use upon her in whatever way they saw fit. The items ran the gamut from instruments of pleasure to instruments of death, namely a gun loaded with a bullet. Abramovic lay for six hours, allowing audience-members to wield the objects on her as they chose.

The artists of the Body Art movement are interested in having the audience to observe the creation process. Their work pushes viewers to think about how the human body might be used in novel, radical, or at times extreme ways. On a broader level Body Art seeks to exhort questions surrounding how we relate to our physical form and how individuals relate to one another.

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