Being Watched
Yvonne Rainer and the 1960s
Seiten
2008
MIT Press (Verlag)
978-0-262-12301-3 (ISBN)
MIT Press (Verlag)
978-0-262-12301-3 (ISBN)
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How Yvonne Rainer's art shaped new ways of watching as well as performing; how it connected 1960s avant-garde art to politics and activism.
In her dance and performances of the 1960s, Yvonne Rainer famously transformed the performing body -- stripped it of special techniques and star status, traded its costumes and leotards for T-shirts and sneakers, asked it to haul mattresses or recite texts rather than leap or spin. Without discounting these innovations, Carrie Lambert-Beatty argues in Being Watched that the crucial site of Rainer's interventions in the 1960s was less the body of the performer than the eye of the viewer -- or rather, the body as offered to the eye. Rainer's art, Lambert-Beatty writes, is structured by a peculiar tension between the body and its display. Through close readings of Rainer's works of the 1960s -- from the often-discussed dance Trio A to lesser-known Vietnam war-era protest dances -- Lambert-Beatty explores how these performances embodied what Rainer called "the seeing difficulty." (As Rainer said: "Dance is hard to see.") Viewed from this perspective, Rainer's work becomes a bridge between key episodes in postwar art.
Lambert-Beatty shows how Rainer's art (and related performance work in Happenings, Fluxus, and Judson Dance Theater) connects with the transformation of the subject-object relation in minimalism and with emerging feminist discourse on the political implications of the objectifying gaze. In a spectacle-soaked era, moreover -- when images of war played nightly on the television news -- Rainer's work engaged the habits of viewing formed in mass-media America, linking avant-garde art and the wider culture of the 1960s. Rainer is significant, argues Lambert-Beatty, not only as a choreographer, but as a sculptor of spectatorship.
In her dance and performances of the 1960s, Yvonne Rainer famously transformed the performing body -- stripped it of special techniques and star status, traded its costumes and leotards for T-shirts and sneakers, asked it to haul mattresses or recite texts rather than leap or spin. Without discounting these innovations, Carrie Lambert-Beatty argues in Being Watched that the crucial site of Rainer's interventions in the 1960s was less the body of the performer than the eye of the viewer -- or rather, the body as offered to the eye. Rainer's art, Lambert-Beatty writes, is structured by a peculiar tension between the body and its display. Through close readings of Rainer's works of the 1960s -- from the often-discussed dance Trio A to lesser-known Vietnam war-era protest dances -- Lambert-Beatty explores how these performances embodied what Rainer called "the seeing difficulty." (As Rainer said: "Dance is hard to see.") Viewed from this perspective, Rainer's work becomes a bridge between key episodes in postwar art.
Lambert-Beatty shows how Rainer's art (and related performance work in Happenings, Fluxus, and Judson Dance Theater) connects with the transformation of the subject-object relation in minimalism and with emerging feminist discourse on the political implications of the objectifying gaze. In a spectacle-soaked era, moreover -- when images of war played nightly on the television news -- Rainer's work engaged the habits of viewing formed in mass-media America, linking avant-garde art and the wider culture of the 1960s. Rainer is significant, argues Lambert-Beatty, not only as a choreographer, but as a sculptor of spectatorship.
Carrie Lambert-Beatty is Assistant Professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture and the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University.
Erscheint lt. Verlag | 19.9.2008 |
---|---|
Reihe/Serie | October Books |
Zusatzinfo | 83 b&w illus. |
Verlagsort | Cambridge, Mass. |
Sprache | englisch |
Maße | 178 x 229 mm |
Gewicht | 998 g |
Themenwelt | Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Film / TV |
Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Theater / Ballett | |
ISBN-10 | 0-262-12301-0 / 0262123010 |
ISBN-13 | 978-0-262-12301-3 / 9780262123013 |
Zustand | Neuware |
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