Body and Performance Art Essay

Body art, which is to say, the use of the artist’s body as a medium, stage and avenue for the exhibition of a particular inspiration and ideology, is closely and mostly defined by feminist art. With tones of subversiveness which picks up after postmodernism, critics argue that the use of the body as an art medium, or all forms of body and performance art is a ‘naive essentialism’ which is necessarily exploited in the art world. Either through live performance art, or captured stills of the human body as a necessary canvass of inspiration and ideology splattered with an assortment of colors, of paint, piercings, tattoos, and similar instance of aesthetical decorations, body art is and should be considered a formidable, and at the very least, ‘real’ artform, because it reflects the idea and creative proclivities of one person, and translates it from the abstract to the concrete. Body and performance art may be considered by some as an act of subversion and a deviation from conventional and traditional forms of art, but for the most part, it evokes the complexity of humanity, in its purest, most raw and unedited form, and despite other issue which could lie therein, the aforementioned qualities encapsulates what art is essentially and fundamentally about.