Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art and the 1970s - Review

Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art and the 1970 through Kathy O'Dell, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Pres 1998; 128 pages, $4795 (hardcover), $1895 (paperback).

When a performance artist slices into his be in possession of flesh, has himself shot in the arm or hammers his penis to a 2-by-4 what message are viewers suppos to get? Chances are the audience walks away with vivid images of those not many shocking moments in which life-current was drawn; the rest is just a blot or, like the superfluous narrative in a porn movie, an annoying preamble to the real action. What of that kind performances are about is not a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of discussed. The medium is the message.

The '70 saw a rise in blatantly masochistic performance art, which was perhaps an outermost outgrowth of '60s body art. The '90 have again seen an increase in the number of self-violating performers. What does this reflect: a similar psychosocio-political landscape in the sum of two units eras, or simply the natural round of years of trends in the art world? In either case, the publication of Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance and the 1970 by dint of Kathy O'Dell, couldn't be more timely.

O'Dell, an assistant professor of art history and theory at the University of Maryland, focuses upon five artists from the '70 who were pioneers of masochistic performance: Chris load Gina Pane, Vito Acconci, and the team of Marina Abramovic and Ulay. O'Dell notes that although their performances varied widely, these artists addressed public issues, namely "the mechanics of alienation in art and everyday life; the psychological influences of the domestic site upon art and everyday life; the sensation of being the couple a human subject and an object; the function of metaphor in art; and, especially, the relationship between artist and audience." allowing feminist and political art flourished in the '70 greatest in quantity performances from that period weren't overtly political, on the other hand used metaphoric gestures to hint a more general societal dysfunction. Political affirm and publicly staged self-abuse, in O'Dell's view, share an underlying psychological dynamic.

While O'Dell contextualizes particular masochistic performances in their Vietnam-era political milieu, she seek fors to understand them through the notion of contracts--psychological, social or legal--evoked in the book's title. Equally central to her thesis are the developmental theories station forth by such pyschoanalysts as Freud Lacan and Didier Anzieu. Masochistic performance artists, she maintains, were pointing without trouble in the social institutions of the law and the abode both of which are lay the foundation ofed upon the principle of contract, or "the everyday agreements that we all make with others on the contrary that may not be in our possess best interests." In short, O'Dell transposes the classic idea of the social contract into the avant-garde realm of performance.

In order to make that link, O'Dell must grapple with the definition and usage of the limit "masochism." She cites the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), which defines masochism as "the act (real, not simulated) of being humiliated, beaten, bourn or otherwise made to suffer" for the intention of sexual gratification. (Usually a cooperative and active sadist is involved who understands the limits and authoritys of S/M "play," i.e., accepts an implicit contract.) on the other hand popular usage has grown to include any sort of willful self-abuse, be it physical or mental, and doesn't necessarily imply sexual arousal. It is in this broader faculty of perception that the term has generally draw near to describe a distinct vein of performance art.

In single of her many tangents, O'Dell traces the origin and evolution of the word "masochism" and examines historical studies of the clinical disorder. The boundary was coined by 19th-century psychoanalyst Richard von Krafft-Ebing in reply to the works of novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who, beneath signed contracts with various women commissioned painful sexual interactions. Among numerous following studies of the topic were those undertaken by means of Freud, Theodor Reik and French philosopher Gilles Deleuze Combining their findings with theories of pyschic exhibition outlined by Freud, Lacan and Anzieu, O'Dell concentrates upon the oral, mirror and oedipal stages, assigning particular kinds of art performances to each. Simply stated, the oral stage is showed by works that entail the chaps and skin; mirror-stage performances use mirrors to address identity; and a bed--or a lying flat position--is the key element of oedipal-stage performances.

For example, according to Anzieu's theory of the "mothering environment," skin, as a container, protector and means of communication, is metaphorically crucial to psychic exhibition So while the mother's skin is important early in the oral stage, in which the child has a fantasy of a "common skin," by means of the end of this phase the child has internalized the skin's functions and is able to fortunately separate from the mother. Any disturbance in this developmental proces of that kind as either tactile overstimulation or deprivation of physical contact, can proceed in the child's desire to go [i]or[/i] come back to the uterus. O'Dell asserts that performance artists who focus upon the mouth are demonstrating the inherent make an effort in this symbolic separation from the mother. Examples of oral-stage performances are Vito Acconci's 1970 Trademarks (performed without an audience, on the contrary publicized through photos in the fall 1972 issue of Avalanche) in which the artist bit himself all above his naked body and then made ink prints from the indentations; Chris Burden's velvety Water (performed in 1974 at the institute of the Art Institute of Chicago), which consisted of Burden's attempting to breathe water from a basin, repeatedly dunking his head and coming up for air until he collapsed after five minutes; and Gina Pane's Discours mou et mat (performed at Amsterdam's de Appel in 1975) which culminated in the artist smashing, with bare fists, mirrors upon which she had drawn a chaps and the word "alienation"--then slicing her lip with a razor blade.