You have to see it to believe it |

Mikes Poppe is chained to a large block of marble. Not because he has something mispeuterd, but out of free will. Poppe is himself now with a hammer and chisel to free. All to the greater glory of the art. For artists, there are no boundaries if they are to performance art car.

“I will allow myself release a sculpture from the marble and the history that the marble we carry,” says Mike Poppe on his show, De profundis in the courthouse in the center of Ostend. “I use hammers and chisels. From the destruction of the block there is a new abstract image. That liberation will probably be between ten days and three weeks. If it takes longer, I hope that I mentally can handle it.” His meals are brought and there are also a bed and a toilet. Anyone may be a witness of the difficult job – after a first-day covers, there were barely a few centimeters of marble removed. If you are not in Ostend touch, the writs of the artist online. And that you should actually do, because on a beautiful marble statue, we should not hope. The only result is that Poppe aims, is his freedom.

That artists the conventional form of art is to challenge, is not new. Some consider the Greek philosopher Diogenes, who in the fourth century before Christ, however, even if a dog was to illustrate that people often have an artificial and hypocritical life – as one of the first performancekunstenaars. Not that there is a definite definition of exists – we have it, finally, about art.

Performance art also played a role in art movements as dadaism, futurism or Bauhaus, but it was in the sixties that this idiosyncratic art form, a high took flight. The French Yves Klein showed, for example, in 1960 a public, in avondkledij to witness how his paintings created. He ‘sold’ also empty spaces for gold: fans got the experience in exchange for the purest matter. And if someone was willing to have the deed of the empty space to burn, threw Small the gold in the Seine.

Explanation for a dead hare

The German artist Joseph Beuys shut himself in 1965, in an art gallery in Düsseldorf Wie man dem toten Hasen that Bilder erklärt (How to images to a haas explains). His audience was the outside watch how he – his head covered with gold leaf and honey – explained pictures to a dead hare. Explanation to his audience, ironically, not got to hear, since they are behind the glass, and stood.

Undressed

Another milestone in the history of performance art was Cut piece by Yoko Ono. The audience at the Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo was with a pair of scissors pieces from Ono’s suit cut. Ono remained silent until she was still only in her underwear, dressed. The good listener distills important themes such as materialism, gender, class, and cultural identity.

Shoot!

Chris Burden was also not averse to a bit of performance, even if at a cost to their own life and limb. So he was ever five days (and nights) in the foetal position while he onlookers pins in his body had to push, he was on a VW Beetle crucified, and he himself also up the stairs afschoppen. In 1971, he went a step further and he asked a friend with a gun to shoot. A bullet grazed the arm was the intention of the Shoot, so that the public can live an idea of what happens when someone was shot. A way to make people aware of what violence really means, instead of on tv. The artist and the audience got more than they signed for, because the friend took aim not good enough and the bullet went through Burdens arm.

A better understanding

The public an insight into what drives us, is also what Annie Sprinkler had in mind with her Public cervix announcement. They showed in the beginning of the nineties, everyone who wanted to see her cervix admire. The ‘intervaginale superhighway’ is, according to her, a beautiful creation that too many people never in their life could admire. There wanted to the former porn star and prostitute who is transformed into seksuologe and artist – so something to do with the help of a flashlight and speculum. Her goal was simple: the veil of ignorance about the female body removal.

Present

One of the great names of the 21st century is Marina Abramovic, with The artist is present was noticed. Abramovic was 736 and a half hours in silence, in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, while the spectators in front of her were allowed to sit.

One of the volunteers who city travel, was her former partner and fellow artist Ulay, where they at that time more than 20 years not more had spoken. An experience that not only the audience impression, but also the life of the artist dramatically changed, she said to herself.

Abramovic handle, anyway, back to Beuys and performed in 2005’s Wie man dem toten Hasen that Bilder erklärt on as part of her Seven easy pieces.