Skip to content
Back Home
Search

All Results

Generic filters
Search in excerpt
  • About
      • About Smarthistory—public art history
      • Press coverage
      • Board of Advisors and Board of Trustees
      • Major donors
      • Smarthistory partners
      • Content editors and contributors
      • Recommended by…
      • A Smarthistory timeline
      • Contribute an essay to Smarthistory
      • Contact Us
      • Support our work
      • We believe art has the power to transform lives and to build understanding across cultures. We believe that the brilliant histories of art belong to everyone, no matter their background.

        Smarthistory unlocks the expertise of hundreds of scholars, making the history of art accessible and engaging to more people, in more places, than any other publisher.
  • Histories of Art
      • Prehistoric
        • Overview of Prehistoric
          • Paleolithic
          • Neolithic
      • Africa
        • Overview of Africa
            • East Africa
            • West Africa
            • North Africa
            • Southern Africa
            • Central Africa
      • Americas
        • Overview of Americas to 1900
            • North America to 1500
            • North America 1500 – 1900
            • South America to 1500
            • South America 1500 – 1900
      • Asia
        • Overview of Asia
            • Hinduism and Buddhism
            • China
            • Japan
            • Korea
            • South Asia
            • Afghanistan
            • Southeast Asia
            • The Himalayas
      • Ancient Mediterranean
        • Overview of Ancient Mediterranean
            • Ancient Near East
            • Egyptian
            • Aegean
            • Greek
            • Nabataean
            • Etruscan
            • Roman
            • Palmyra
      • Medieval Europe & Byzantine
        • Overview of Medieval Europe + Byzantium
            • A beginner’s guide
            • Christianity and art
            • Judaism and art
            • The medieval book
            • Early Christian
            • Byzantine
            • Carolingian
            • Ottonian
            • Romanesque
            • Gothic Art
            • The crusades
      • The Islamic World
        • Overview of the Islamic World
          • Early Period
          • Medieval Period
          • Later period
      • Europe 1300-1800
        • Overview of Europe 1300 – 1800
              • Italy: 14th century
              • Italy: 15th century
              • Italy: 16th century
              • Northern Europe: 15th century
              • Northern Europe: 16th century
              • Spain: 15th and 16th century
              • Reformation and Counter-Reformation
              • Baroque: 17th century
              • Rococo: early to mid 18th century
              • Neoclassicism: late 18th century
              • British: 18th century
      • Europe 1800-1900
        • Overview of Europe: 19th century
            • Romanticism
            • Early Photography
            • Victorian art
            • Realism
            • Second Empire
            • Impressionism
            • Post-Impressionism
            • Symbolism / Art Nouveau
            • The Peredvizhniki
      • Oceania
        • Overview of Oceania
            • Lapita
            • Polynesia
            • Melanesia
            • Micronesia
            • Australia
      • Modernisms 1900-1980
        • Overview of Modernisms 1900 – 1980
            • A beginner’s guide
            • Fauvism + Expressionism
            • Cubism + Early Abstraction
            • Dada + Surrealism
            • German art between the wars
            • Latin American modernism
            • American art to WWII
            • Postwar American art
            • Postwar European art
            • Conceptual + Performance art
            • Post Minimalism
            • Global vanguard
            • Architecture + Design
      • Global cultures 1980 to now
        • Overview of Global Cultures 1980 – now
            • Appropriation and ideological critique
            • Identity and the body
            • Banality and kitsch
            • Ritual, spirituality and transcendence
            • Histories real and imagined
  • Guided learning
      • Start here
          • OVERVIEW
              • Looking at art
              • Approaches to art history
              • Understanding religion in art
              • Understanding museums
              • For the very beginner
              • seeingamericaFeatured | Art that brings U.S. history to life
      • Courses in art history & history
          • OVERVIEW
              • Seeing America – a portal to American history and art
              • ARCHES – At-Risk Cultural Heritage Education Series
              • Short courses – spend an hour — learn a lot!
              • Across cultures – An interconnected world is not as recent as we think.
              • Teaching with images – For K-12 teachers
              • Syllabi / AP & A-level courses
              • Art Appreciation
              • Creating + conserving
      • Smarthistory books
        • Overview – More titles coming soon!
            • AP® Art History (vol. 1) – nos. 1 – 47
            • AP® Art History (vol. 2) – nos. 48-98
            • AP® Art History (vol. 3) – nos. 99 – 152
            • AP® Art History (vol. 4) – nos. 153 – 191
            • AP® Art History (vol. 5) – nos. 192 – 250
            • Ancient Near Eastern art
            • Ancient Egyptian Art
            • Ancient Aegean Art
            • Ancient Greek Art
            • Ancient Etruscan art
            • Ancient Roman art
            • Guide to Italian art in the 1300s
      • Virtual visits – museums & sites
        • Overview – art by location
          • Austria
          • China
          • Egypt
          • France
          • Germany
          • Greece
          • Italy
          • India
          • Japan
          • Mexico
          • Netherlands
          • Peru
          • Russia
          • Spain
          • Turkey
          • United Kingdom
          • United States
  • Commons
  • Support
      • Donate – Help Smarthistory continue to make a difference
      • Contribute an essay – Help make art history relevant and engaging
      • Shop – Support us by purchasing merchandise
      • We created Smarthistory to provide students around the world with the highest-quality educational resources for art and cultural heritage—for free.
Search

Modernisms
1900-1980

Browse this content
A beginner's guide
An Introduction to photography in the early 20th century
Contemporary Art, an introduction
Representation and abstraction: looking at Millais and Newman
Art and context: Monet’s Cliff Walk at Pourville and Malevich’s White on White
Key concepts
Modern art and reality
Expression and modern art
Primitivism and Modern Art
Formalism I: Formal Harmony
Formalism II: Truth to Materials
Fauvism + Expressionism
Browse this content
Fauvism
Browse this content
Fauvism, an introduction
Fauve Landscapes and City Views
André Derain, The Dance
Henri Matisse
Luxe, calme et volupté
Open Window, Collioure
Bonheur de Vivre
Dance I
The Red Studio
The Blue Window
Goldfish
The Piano Lesson
The illustrated book Jazz
Expressionism
Browse this content
Expressionism, an introduction
Expressionism as Nordic?
Der Blaue Reiter
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Self-Portrait As a Soldier
Street, Dresden
Street, Berlin
Paula Modersohn-Becker, Self-Portrait Nude with Amber Necklace, Half-Length I
Emil Nolde, Young Couple
Alexej von Jawlensky, Young Girl in a Flowered Hat
Vasily Kandinsky
Kandinsky, Apocalypse, Abstraction
Improvisation 28 (second version)
Klänge (Sounds)
Franz Marc and the animalization of art
Egon Schiele
Seated Male Nude (Self-Portrait)
Nazi looting: Egon Schiele’s Portrait of Wally
The Hermits
Cubism + early abstraction
Browse this content
The Case for Abstraction
Who created the first abstract artwork?
Abstract art and Theosophy
Cubism
Browse this content
Beginner's guide to Cubism
Pablo Picasso and the new language of Cubism
Inventing Cubism
Cubism and multiple perspectives
Synthetic Cubism, Part I
Synthetic Cubism, Part II
Salon Cubism
Pablo Picasso
Picasso’s Early Work
Guernica
Portrait of Gertrude Stein
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Pablo Picasso, Three Women
The Reservoir, Horta de Ebro
Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler
Still Life with Chair Caning
Pablo Picasso, The Three Musicians
Guitar
Georges Braque
Le Viaduc à L'Estaque, (The Viaduct at L'Estaque)
Georges Braque, Violin and Palette
Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso: Two Cubist Musicians
The Portuguese
Cubist sculpture
Cubist Sculpture I
Cubist Sculpture II
Juan Gris, The Table
The Cubist City – Robert Delaunay and Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger, Contrast of Forms
Futurism
Browse this content
Italian Futurism: An Introduction
Futurist Free Word Painting
Umberto Boccioni and the Futurist City
Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
Gino Severini, Dynamic Hieroglyph of the Bal Tabarin
Giacomo Balla, Street Light
Carlo Carrà, Funeral of the Anarchist Galli
Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Horse
Simultanism (Orphism)
Sonia Delaunay
Robert Delaunay
Robert Delaunay, Simultaneous Contrasts: Sun and Moon
Russian avant-garde
Russian Neo-Primitivism: Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov
Kazmir Malevich, Suprematist Composition: White on White
Kasimir Malevich and Cubo-Futurism
Suprematism, Part I: Kasimir Malevich
Suprematism, Part II: El Lissitzky
Constructivism, Part I
Constructivism, Part II
Tatlin’s Tower
Varvara Stepanova, The Results of the First Five-Year Plan
Purism
School of Paris
Browse this content
Amedeo Modigliani, Young Woman in a Shirt
Constantin Brancusi
The Kiss
Photography
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare
De Stijl
Browse this content
De Stijl, Part I: Total Purity
De Stijl, Part II: Near-Abstraction and Pure Abstraction
De Stijl, Part III: The Total De Stijl Environment
Piet Mondrian
Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow
Composition No. II, with Red and Blue
TateShots: Piet Mondrian
British art and literature
British Art and Literature During WWI
The Old Guitarist, and the question of beauty
Dada + Surrealism
Browse this content
Dada
Browse this content
A beginner's guide to Dada
Introduction to Dada
Dada Manifesto
Dada Pataphysics
Dada Politics
Dada Collage
Dada Readymades
Dada Performance
Marcel Duchamp
Nude Descending a Staircase, No 2
Art as concept: In Advance of the Broken Arm
Fountain
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)
Boite-en-valise, Series F
Raoul Hausmann, Spirit of the Age: Mechanical Head
Dada's "Aproximate Man": A Portrait of Tristan Tzara (1919) by Marcel Janco
Hannah Höch
Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany (essay)
Francis Picabia, Ideal
Surrealism
Browse this content
A beginner's guide
Surrealism, an introduction
The Case for Surrealism
Surrealism: Origins and Precursors
Surrealism and Psychoanalysis
Surrealist Techniques: Automatism
Surrealist Techniques: Subversive Realism
Surrealist Techniques: Collage
Surrealist Photography
Surrealist Exhibitions
Surrealism and Women
Man Ray, The Gift
René Magritte, The Treachery of Images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe)
Salvador Dalí
The Persistence of Memory
Metamorphosis of Narcissus
Alberto Giacometti, The Palace at 4 a.m.
Meret Oppenheim, Object (Fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon)
German art between the wars
Browse this content
Prints and photography
Browse this content
Käthe Kollwitz, In Memoriam Karl Liebknecht
August Sander, Portraits
Umbo, The Roving Reporter
Bauhaus
Browse this content
The Bauhaus, an Introduction
The Bauhaus and Bau
The Bauhaus: Marcel Breuer
The Bauhaus: Marianne Brandt
Lyonel Feininger, Cathedral for Program of the State Bauhaus in Weimar
Paul Klee, Twittering Machine (Die Zwitscher-Maschine)
László Moholy-Nagy
Telephone Pictures
Composition A.XX
Climbing the Mast
New Objectivity
Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) – An Introduction
Christian Schad, Self-Portrait
George Grosz, Remembering
Nazi visual culture
Paul Troost, House of (German) Art
Art in Nazi Germany
Latin American Modernism
Browse this content
Beginner's guide
Latin American art, an introduction
Early vanguards
Francisco Goitia, Tata Jesucristo
Mexican Muralism
Browse this content
Mexican Muralism: Los Tres Grandes David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, and José Clemente Orozco
Diego Rivera
The History of Mexico: Diego Rivera’s Murals at the National Palace
Sugar Cane
Man at the Crossroads
Man Controller of the Universe
Detroit Industry Murals
Calla Lilly Vendor (Vendedora de Alcatraces)
Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central Park
José Clemente Orozco, Dive Bomber and Tank
Surrealism
Browse this content
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo, introduction
Frieda and Diego Rivera​
The Two Fridas (Las dos Fridas)
Wifredo Lam, The Jungle
Constructivism
Geometric Abstraction in South America, an introduction
Joaquín Torres-García, Inverted America
Lygia Clark, Bicho
Breaking the Frame – the Concrete Art Movement
Painting in an Industrial Age – the Concrete Art Movement
The Challenge of a Straight Line – the Concrete Art Movement
Brazilian modernism
The origins of modern art in São Paulo, an introduction
An Antidote for Social Amnesia: The Memory Space of the Cais do Valongo
Letícia Parente, Marca registrada
Hélio Oiticica, Parangolés
International Style architecture in Mexico and Brazil
American art to WWII
Browse this content
American Impressionism
Metcalf, Havana Harbor
When the department store was new: Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones, The Shoe Shop
Symbolism
Henry Ossawa Tanner
The Banjo Lesson
Angels Appearing before the Shepherds
Ashcan School
Browse this content
The Ashcan School, an introduction
George Luks, Hester Street
George Bellows
Pennsylvania Station Excavation
Both Members of This Club
Return of the Useless
John Sloan, Movies
291
Browse this content
291—Little Galleries of the Photo Secession
Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage
Marsden Hartley, Portrait of a German Officer
Joseph Stella, The Voice of the City of New York Interpreted
Charles Demuth, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold
Georgia O’Keeffe, The Lawrence Tree
American Modernism
Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Little Joe with Cow
Elsie Driggs, Blast Furnaces
Millard Sheets, Tenement Flats
The American south and southwest
Robert Henri, Tom Po Qui (Water of Antelope Lake/Indian Girl/Ramoncita)
The lure of the American Southwest: E. Martin Hennings, Rabbit Hunt
Velino Shije Herrera (Ma Pe Wi), Design, Tree and Birds
Bill Traylor
Harlem Renaissance
Aaron Douglas, Aspiration
Jacob Lawrence
The Migration Series
Ambulance Call
Social Realism
Browse this content
Todros Geller, Strange Worlds
Grant Wood
American Gothic
Parson Weems' Fable
Reginald Marsh, Wooden Horses
Ben Shahn
The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti
Miners' Wives
Romare Bearden, Factory Workers
Edward Hopper, Nighthawks
Horace Pippin, Mr. Prejudice
Norman Rockwell, Rosie the Riveter
Sculpture
Alexander Calder, Mobile
Photography
Walker Evans, Subway Passengers, New York City
Ansel Adams: Visualizing a Photograph
Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother
Postwar American art
Browse this content
Abstract Expressionism
Browse this content
Finding meaning in abstraction
Abstract Expressionism, an introduction
Willem de Kooning, Woman, I
Lee Krasner, Untitled
Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 57
Jackson Pollock
Autumn Rhythm
Mural
The Case for Jackson Pollock
Why is that important? Looking at Jackson Pollock
The Painting Techniques of Jackson Pollock
Conservation: Jackson Pollock, One: Number 31, 1950
Paint Application Studies of Jackson Pollock’s Mural
Mark Rothko
No. 210/No. 211 (Orange), 1960
No. 3/No. 13
The Case for Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko (at MoMA)
Restoring Rothko
Barnett Newman
Onement, I
Barnett Newman at MoMA
The Painting Techniques of Barnett Newman
Representation and abstraction: looking at Millais and Newman
Franz Kline
Franz Kline at MoMA
The Painting Techniques of Franz Kline
New York School
Browse this content
The Impact of Abstract Expressionism
Jasper Johns
Flag
White Flag
Robert Rauschenberg
Erased de Kooning Drawing
Canyon
Bed
Retroactive I
Ed Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, Useful Art #5: The Western Motel
Ad Reinhardt
Abstract Painting
Ad Reinhardt at MoMA
The Painting Techniques of Ad Reinhardt
Helen Frankenthaler
Mountains and Sea
The Bay
Frank Stella, The Marriage of Reason and Squalor
Postwar figurative art
George Tooker, Highway
Jess, If All the World Were Paper and All the Water Sink
Benny Andrews, Flag Day
Duane Hanson, Executive
Faith Ringgold, Dancing at the Louvre
Faith Ringgold, Ben
Postwar abstraction
Josef Albers, Homage to the Square
Ruth Asawa, Untitled
Pop art
Browse this content
A beginner's guide
Contemporary Art, an introduction
Pop Art
Andy Warhol
Coca-Cola [3]
Marilyn Diptych
Why is this art? Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans
The Case for Andy Warhol
Gold Marilyn Monroe
Marisol, The Party
Claes Oldenburg
Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks
Floor Cake
James Rosenquist, F-111
Roy Lichtenstein, Rouen Cathedral Set V
Minimalism + Earthworks
Browse this content
A beginner's guide
An introduction to Minimalism
The Case for Minimalism
The Case for Land Art
Carl Andre, Lever
Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty
Robert Morris
(Untitled) L-Beams
Bodyspacemotionthings
Walter De Maria, The Lightning Field
Donald Judd, Untitled
James Turrell, Skyspace, The Way of Color
Richard Serra
Tilted Arc
Intersection II
Torqued Ellipse IV
Band
Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Gates
Photography
Gordon Parks, Off on My Own (Harlem, New York)
Gary Winogrand, Democratic Convention, 1960
New Topographics
How Photographs of Poverty in the Americas Ignited an International Battle over Propaganda
An interview with Robert Frank
Richard Misrach’s early work and Border Cantos
Postwar European art
Browse this content
France
Jean Dubuffet
A View of Paris: The Life of Pleasure
Childbirth
Switzerland
Alberto Giacometti, Walking Man II
Jean Tinguely, Homage to New York
Germany
Browse this content
Joseph Beuys
Table with Accumulator (Tisch mit Aggregat)
Fat Chair
Feet Washing and Conceptual Performance
Sigmar Polke
Bunnies
Watchtower series
Gerhard Richter
Uncle Rudi
Betty
Gerhard Richter, September
Gerhard Richter, The Cage Paintings (1-6)
Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer, Shulamite
An interview with Anselm Kiefer
Britain
Browse this content
Barbara Hepworth, Pelagos
Describing Sculpture: Henry Moore's Reclining Figure
Francis Bacon, Triptych – August 1972
Lucian Freud, Standing by the Rags
Poland
Magdalena Abakanowicz, Androgyne III
Conceptual + Performance Art
Browse this content
Conceptual Art
Browse this content
A beginner's guide
Conceptual Art, An Introduction
The Case for Conceptual Art
Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs
The Case for Yoko Ono
John Baldessari, I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art
Hans Haacke, Seurat’s “Les Poseuses” (small version), 1884-1975
Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii
Yayoi Kusama
Narcissus Garden
Yayoi Kusama (Tate)
Bruce Nauman, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths
Performance Art
Browse this content
Performance Art, an Introduction
The Case for Performance Art
Vito Acconci, Following Piece
Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Outside (July 23, 1973)
Gordon Matta-Clark, Splitting
Marina Abramović, The Artist is Present
Post Minimalism
Browse this content
Alternative art spaces in NYC
Eva Hesse
The last work of Eva Hesse
Eva Hesse, Untitled (Rope Piece)
Eva Hesse, Untitled
Louise Bourgeois, Cumul I
Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party
Chicano Art Movement
Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF)
Self Help Graphics and Art
Eleanor Antin, Carving: A Traditional Sculpture
Mary Kelly, Post-Partum Document
Jackie Winsor, #1 Rope
Global vanguards
Browse this content
Mexico
Mónica Mayer, The Clothesline
Ethiopia
Skunder Boghossian, Night Flight of Dread and Delight
Nigeria
Uche Okeke
Sudan
Ibrahim El-Salahi, Reborn Sounds of Childhood Dreams
Mali
Mickalene Thomas on Seydou Keïta
Korea
Song Su-Nam, Summer Trees
China
Liu Chunhua, Chairman Mao en Route to Anyuan
Architecture, design, and dance
Browse this content
Vienna Secession
Otto Wagner, Postal Savings Bank
Chicago School
Louis Sullivan, Carson, Pirie, Scott Building
New York skyscrapers & landmarks
Browse this content
Cass Gilbert, Woolworth Building
Van Alen, The Chrysler Building
Rockefeller Center
A Landmark Decision: Penn Station, Grand Central, and the architectural heritage of NYC
International style
Browse this content
Peter Behrens, Turbine Factory
Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye
Frank Lloyd Wright
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City
Fallingwater
Gordon Bunshaft for Skidmore Owings and Merrill, Lever House
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building, New York City
Negotiating the past in Berlin: the Palast der Republik
American design
Libbey Glass Company, Punch Bowl
Connecticut Klan robe
Russel Wright, “American Modern” Pitchers
Glass Chair at the 1939 New York World’s Fair
Late Modernism/Post-Modernism
Browse this content
Running in sneakers, the Judson Dance Theater
The Berlin Wall as a political symbol
Breuer, The Whitney Museum of American Art (now The Met Breuer)
Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Robert Venturi, House in New Castle County, Delaware
Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Bilbao
Zaha Hadid, MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts

The Case for Performance Art

by The Art Assignment

Speaker: Sarah Urist Green

Cite this page as: The Art Assignment, "The Case for Performance Art," in Smarthistory, April 9, 2018, accessed January 18, 2021, https://smarthistory.org/the-case-for-performance-art/.

Flickr IconBrowse Smarthistory images for teaching & learning! 

Sign up for our newsletter!

Receive occasional emails about new Smarthistory content.

Want to learn new teaching and learning strategies?

Join our free webinars!

Christ Crucified, 17th century, ivory (Museo Franz Mayer, Mexico City)

Learn about Hispano-Philippine ivories

on Wed., 1/20 at 1:00 pm eastern

RSVP here
Watch a short video about these ivories Close

Smarthistory is a nonprofit organization

At Smarthistory we believe art has the power to transform lives and to build understanding across cultures. We believe that the brilliant histories of art belong to everyone, no matter their background. Smarthistory’s free, award-winning digital content unlocks the expertise of hundreds of leading scholars, making the history of art accessible and engaging to more people, in more places, than any other provider.

  • Donate
  • Subscribe to our newsletter
  • Contact Us
facebook icon
twitter icon
instagram icon
youtube icon
flickr icon
  • About Smarthistory
  • Smarthistory’s blog
  • Contribute an essay
  • Content editors and contributors

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

· © 2021 Smarthistory · Powered by · Designed with the Customizr theme ·