Performance: Live Art 1909 to the Present

The book tells the story of performance art from 1909 and the work of the Italian Futurists. The opening years of this century inaugurated a period of intoxication with what has been described as “the brutal grandeur and ephemeral charm of things that you won't see twice”. The Futurists in Milan and St. Petersburg, the Dadaists in Zurich and Berlin, and the Surrealists in Paris and New York all practiced deliberate provocation of their audiences — in the streets as well as in cafes, theatres, and galleries — with the purpose of talking their art ideas to a wide public. The first art institution to provide a performance workshop was the Bauhaus: its theater created experimental events in which sculptors, painters, architects, dancers, and costume designers could combine their talents and thus invent an entirly new art form.