Adam Wallace: Dissertation

This has been such a busy week, I haven't been able to stop for a second. The biggest thing I guess was handing in my dissertation on Monday. Its such a relief to have it out of the way, and to be able to focus on my studio work & preparation for the degree show.

My subject was:

American and Viennese Actionism: A Case Study of Trangressive Performance Art and Critical Responses to its Emergence

What is American Actionism I hear you ask. Its performance art like Paul McCarthy & Chris Burden, whose practice is shocking and disturbing. Because of its superficial similarity to the work of the Viennese Actionists, I coined the term American Actionism to describe their work. The differences are that the Viennese group were reacting to the political structure in Austria, which was never de-Nazified after the Second World War, and saw the same political, bureaucrats & police officials remain in power after the war, whereas McCarthy, Burden, Mike Kelley, were reacting to American culture, especially the denial and sanitisation of violence in the media, and the crass consumerism which has become so much a part of American life.

A large part of my argument was that Paul McCarthy is no longer a transgressive artist in the sense of Georges Battaile's thoughts on transgression, but is today very much part of the art market; his practice having been successfully recuperated by the market forces of capitalism. Today, McCarthy produces shock & spectacle, not transgression & subversion, Rabelaisian spectacle rather than Battailean transgression.

Chris Burden's work is an example of extreme body art, which is highly transgressive, [in other words breaching societal norms and taboos]. For his MA thesis he confined himself to a gym locker for five days, he had a friend shoot him with a .22 rifle, and had himself crucified to the roof of a Volkswagen Beetle, which was then pushed into the middle of an LA street.

How do the oeuvres of McCarthy and Burden relate to my studio practice, considering they are working within performance, and I am a painter/collagist/animator? Their work, although in a different media involves using shock, disgust as well as humour to critique cultural icons and mainstream media. Thus they inform me of the conceptual ideas which I want to make use of in my practice. They are an important contextual element in my work.