It’s not a new article, but I feel like I’ve been sending it to everyone I know lately. Also, just for funsies, a fairly thoughtful (if completely irreverent to the idea of performance art) objection to his argument on Gawker: ’James Franco’s General Hospital Appearance Was Subversive Performance Art.’
I don’t know, I personally think Franco’s essay is a nice, simple summary of performance art, and the recurring ‘Is this art?’ underlines a sentiment pervasive amongst contemporary art consumers and producers. It’s an intriguing fact of the contemporary art scene that much of it focuses on the parameters of the category of ‘art’, turning something visual into something essentially linguistic and conceptual. But, on the other hand (as pointed out by the Gawker article and many of the comments after it), a lot of ‘art’ today is essentially creating something of poor quality and calling it ‘subversive.’ And it’s been done again and again: it’s revolution by convention.
