Not always books get to be both erudite and life affirming. Performance Art by RoseLee Goldberg is one such book. It speaks both about performance art and critical concepts related to it and also of the life and motivations of performers work and how it affected different contexts: ``The goal of this book remains – to raise questions and gain new insights –it can only hint at life off its pages`` (2010: 9)
If you travel long enough through a system you will understand how the whole looks like. And you can draw a map. This book does just that through giving as many exemplas as possible we understand what performance is by ``travelling`` through the history of performance. Giving examples is probably the best way to define performance and what a performance artist is. From Marinetti to Mathew Barney the art of performance is a continuously developing creative flow: ``As the extraordinary range of material in this long, complex and fascinating history demonstrates, performance art continues to defy definition and remains as unpredictable, and provocative as it ever was.``(2010: 226)
The book provides also insight and understanding into how things were happening simultaneously in different parts of the world and how they were interrelated or not related to one another or to previous events.
Performance art is a way of indicating new directions and researching. I remember in school teachers telling me about different theater practitioners: ``He/she experienced for several years before coming back to the theater world``. Rarely did I give any thought to what these practitioners actually did during those years of secluded experiences. Some were concerned with performance art.
A performance piece has a lot to do with making art fit in the every day life and getting a reaction from every day people. Almost all performance is militant of something. Sometimes by resorting to shocking and aggressive practices.
Also specific is the little concern for technique and esthetic discipline. Some of the results are quite poor if not undistinguishable from a non-art type live action. If the ``Great European Art`` is concerned with the object performers are interested in the process and certain actions. For instance for Cabaret Voltaire only one performer – Emmy Henings - was an actual trained professional performer. But this not stop the rest of the group – painters of poets - to get up and devise and star in their own shows.
The text is vivid and the pictures serve their purpose of supporting information by clarifying and bringing new insight. Too bad all (with the exception of the cover) are black and white.
As an easy conclusion RosaLee Goldberg`s book defines for us performance as the sum of it`s parts: a live action part of a series of live actions that become clear as a phenomena when seen from a distance. And when performing art has a clear(er) contour so do individual performances who are finally laid at rest as recognized art history landmarks.
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