A Visual Retrospective of the Avant-Garde
By Tisha Nemeth-Loomis

Carolyn Jack's article, A Visual Retrospective of the Avant-Garde attempts to make sense of performance art's psychological discipline by compartmentalizing what cannot be contained.

The archived photo collection of performance art housed in Cleveland State University's art gallery is a culmination of expressions amassed over 12 years, not intended to be art or merely “look” like art, is the historical documentation of the artists' processes of development. These images were not placed on display to qualify as art, which is the core of Ms. Jack's misunderstanding. Its installation not intended to be visually pleasing: Performance art is not a one-dimensional aesthetic limited within conventional forms of fine art. Instead, it is a limitless world utilizing the unlimited canvas of human body and fathomless resources of the mind. It requires and asks much of its audience, directing them into its predominantly symbolic and task- oriented realm, engaging psychology of the viewer in order that they may enter a place where questioning, learning and feeling is tantamount to living and breathing.

Performance-oriented art has never sought to make audiences feel good, but to cause discomfort; removed from the realms of comfort to see further and more deeply than what can be expressed in words, canvas, or sculpture. The personal, psychological realism via symbolism provide a complex web of lessons in culture, psychology, community and politics - and despite popular belief - performance artists and their craft are not assemblies of the sensational. Many of these artists sacrifice their own comfort and dignity. Performance art cannot be discounted as mere sensationalism as its components delve into multi-dimensional factors involving emotions, community, memory, politics, sexuality, social commentary and identity. It is comprised of our faculties of reasoning to interconnect profound human qualities, to launch an intellectualism in hopes of reaching elevated levels of existence. Performance art as it exists in the 21st century maintains its own respected art movement, with classes taught throughout universities in the U.S. and England, and it's recognized as a valuable resource in the arts community in relation to development of the artist. Curriculum assists in guiding artists' expressions to simultaneously instruct the audience, surpassing the boundaries of more traditional & limiting mediums of fine art; performance art is the ultimate multi-media expression in the form of the ever-changing human body.
from Cool Cleveland senior editor Tisha Nemeth-Loomis

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