I. Introduction
The human figure has been a source of artistic inspiration for millennia. From carved stone sculptures to self-mutilation, the versatility of the body and the implications of its use have not ceased to fascinate artists and viewers alike. The twentieth century witnessed a profound shift in the relationship between artists and the body. Documentation of the private undertakings of the Abstract Expressionists during the 1950s led to the creation of the term ‘action painters’, which consequently gave rise to the notion of the performance as central to, and often more important than, the finished material product.[1]
A variety of terms emerged to denote the different techniques and ideologies of works focused on performance, yet by the 1970s these were all grouped under a single category: performance art.[2] A subset of performance art, in which the artist’s body is used as the primary medium, was labelled ‘body art’. Art critic and co-founder of Avalanche magazine, Willoughby Sharp, first introduced the term. Sharp defined body art in 1970 as art in which the body is both the “subject and object of the work.”[3] Artists belonging to this movement manipulate their bodies in private or public settings and document the events through photography or video.[4] The results are often powerful statements that demand concentrated attention and invite social and personal introspection.
This essay examines the use of violence toward the body as a means of expressing ideologies as exemplified in the works of Ana Mendieta and Chris Burden. By juxtaposing the works of these two artists, this essay will assess the use of actual violence and implied violence under three criteria: social critique, the abject and gender.
The human figure has been a source of artistic inspiration for millennia. From carved stone sculptures to self-mutilation, the versatility of the body and the implications of its use have not ceased to fascinate artists and viewers alike. The twentieth century witnessed a profound shift in the relationship between artists and the body. Documentation of the private undertakings of the Abstract Expressionists during the 1950s led to the creation of the term ‘action painters’, which consequently gave rise to the notion of the performance as central to, and often more important than, the finished material product.[1]
A variety of terms emerged to denote the different techniques and ideologies of works focused on performance, yet by the 1970s these were all grouped under a single category: performance art.[2] A subset of performance art, in which the artist’s body is used as the primary medium, was labelled ‘body art’. Art critic and co-founder of Avalanche magazine, Willoughby Sharp, first introduced the term. Sharp defined body art in 1970 as art in which the body is both the “subject and object of the work.”[3] Artists belonging to this movement manipulate their bodies in private or public settings and document the events through photography or video.[4] The results are often powerful statements that demand concentrated attention and invite social and personal introspection.
This essay examines the use of violence toward the body as a means of expressing ideologies as exemplified in the works of Ana Mendieta and Chris Burden. By juxtaposing the works of these two artists, this essay will assess the use of actual violence and implied violence under three criteria: social critique, the abject and gender.
II. The Artists
The events in Ana Mendieta’s life that led to her development as an artist are key when assessing the use of violence on the body in her work. Mendieta was born in Havana, Cuba in 1948 amid great political turmoil. In 1961 she was sent to Unites States, along with her sister, Raquel, by way of Operation Pedro Pan.[5] After spending a period of time in the Miami refugee camps the girls were dispatched to Iowa. While being shipped between orphanages and foster homes the sisters experienced, on account of their darker skin and Latin background, the social and racial discrimination that was predominant during the American civil rights movement.[6]
After receiving a BA in art in 1969, and an MA in painting in 1972, from the University of Iowa, Mendieta became disenchanted with the paintings she was producing and began experimenting with her body as a subject and medium. She states that, “The turning point in my art was in 1972 when I realized my paintings were not real enough for what I wanted the image to convey – and by real I mean I wanted my images to have power, to be magic.”[7] That same year she enrolled in Iowa’s multimedia MFA programme, which exposed her to artists such as Vito Acconci and Nam June Paik whose work stressed the importance of process and the body.[8]
Mendieta continued to produce work in Iowa throughout most of the 1970s, occasionally visiting Mexico and focusing primarily on the Silueta series.[9] In 1978 she moved to New York City where she attracted the attention of a broader and more diverse audience. Following a one-year residency in Rome she returned to New York and married conceptual artist Carl Andre. Later that year (1985), Mendieta fell to her death from the window of her 34th-floor apartment.[10]
It is impossible to pin down Mendieta to one artistic movement. As explained by the author of Where is Ana Mendieta? Identity, Performance, and Exile, Jane Blocker:
She adapted and synthesized artistic trends of the decade – conceptualism, body art, performance, installations, and earth art – to animate the territorial boundaries between artists and audience, male and female, body and spirit. In each instance, however, by virtue or her identity and her politics, she exposed and troubled the assumptions that lie hidden behind those directives.[11]
Yet is it the female body that dominates in Mendieta’s oeuvre. Through the use of her body the artist explores the themes of gender, beauty, race, sexuality and ethnicity, among others, to express, and often denounce, prevailing ideologies.
Also producing art in the United States in the 1970s was Chris Burden. Like Mendieta, Burden utilised his body as both the subject and object of his work. Although the events leading up to his arrival on the art scene do not seem as essential to his development as an artist as is the case of Mendieta, they do merit acknowledgment, primarily for the purpose of creating contrast.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1946, Burden moved to southern California in 1965 where he earned a BFA from Pomona University and then an MFA from the University of California in 1971.[12] His passion for photography arose during a long recovery process following a motorcycle accident at the age of 12.[13] Throughout the 1970s, Burden executed a series of acts of masochism and physical endurance that shocked the community and pushed the boundaries of performance art.[14] Speculations revolving around the meaning of his pieces took into account America’s involvement in the Vietnam War as well as the civil rights movement. Many critics believe that Burden’s work stands in opposition to the atrocities committed during that decade, while the artist himself notes that, “Art doesn’t have a purpose. It’s a free spot in society, where you can do anything. I don’t think my pieces provide answers, they just ask questions, they don’t have an end in themselves. But they certainly raise questions.”[15]
Towards the end of the decade Burden moved away from performance pieces and began to focus on installation works, though not as explicitly violent they maintained a palpable political discourse.[16]
III. Violence: Implied and Actual
Ana Mendieta and Chris Burden use violence upon the self to convey ideologies in their works. A central distinction between their pieces is the use of implied violence, by the former, and the use of actual violence, by the latter. In order to assess the works under this criterion is it important to establish a valid definition of violence. For the purpose of this essay violence will be defined as “behaviours involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.”[17] Within the analysis of violence an examination of individual works as statements of social critique, the abject and gender will be undertaken.
Social Critique
During the 1970s, Mendieta and Burden created works that responded to the social and political climate of the time. Two works that exemplify such social critique are Mendieta’s Untitled (Rape Scene)[18] (1973) and Burden’s Five Day Locker Piece (1971).
In 1973, Mendieta invited a group of classmates from the University of Iowa, predominantly male, to her apartment. They arrived to find the artist’s naked body tied up and bent over a table covered in fake blood in a forensic recreation of a crime committed on campus just months earlier.[19] As with most performance art, the act was preserved through photography.
The events in Ana Mendieta’s life that led to her development as an artist are key when assessing the use of violence on the body in her work. Mendieta was born in Havana, Cuba in 1948 amid great political turmoil. In 1961 she was sent to Unites States, along with her sister, Raquel, by way of Operation Pedro Pan.[5] After spending a period of time in the Miami refugee camps the girls were dispatched to Iowa. While being shipped between orphanages and foster homes the sisters experienced, on account of their darker skin and Latin background, the social and racial discrimination that was predominant during the American civil rights movement.[6]
After receiving a BA in art in 1969, and an MA in painting in 1972, from the University of Iowa, Mendieta became disenchanted with the paintings she was producing and began experimenting with her body as a subject and medium. She states that, “The turning point in my art was in 1972 when I realized my paintings were not real enough for what I wanted the image to convey – and by real I mean I wanted my images to have power, to be magic.”[7] That same year she enrolled in Iowa’s multimedia MFA programme, which exposed her to artists such as Vito Acconci and Nam June Paik whose work stressed the importance of process and the body.[8]
Mendieta continued to produce work in Iowa throughout most of the 1970s, occasionally visiting Mexico and focusing primarily on the Silueta series.[9] In 1978 she moved to New York City where she attracted the attention of a broader and more diverse audience. Following a one-year residency in Rome she returned to New York and married conceptual artist Carl Andre. Later that year (1985), Mendieta fell to her death from the window of her 34th-floor apartment.[10]
It is impossible to pin down Mendieta to one artistic movement. As explained by the author of Where is Ana Mendieta? Identity, Performance, and Exile, Jane Blocker:
She adapted and synthesized artistic trends of the decade – conceptualism, body art, performance, installations, and earth art – to animate the territorial boundaries between artists and audience, male and female, body and spirit. In each instance, however, by virtue or her identity and her politics, she exposed and troubled the assumptions that lie hidden behind those directives.[11]
Yet is it the female body that dominates in Mendieta’s oeuvre. Through the use of her body the artist explores the themes of gender, beauty, race, sexuality and ethnicity, among others, to express, and often denounce, prevailing ideologies.
Also producing art in the United States in the 1970s was Chris Burden. Like Mendieta, Burden utilised his body as both the subject and object of his work. Although the events leading up to his arrival on the art scene do not seem as essential to his development as an artist as is the case of Mendieta, they do merit acknowledgment, primarily for the purpose of creating contrast.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1946, Burden moved to southern California in 1965 where he earned a BFA from Pomona University and then an MFA from the University of California in 1971.[12] His passion for photography arose during a long recovery process following a motorcycle accident at the age of 12.[13] Throughout the 1970s, Burden executed a series of acts of masochism and physical endurance that shocked the community and pushed the boundaries of performance art.[14] Speculations revolving around the meaning of his pieces took into account America’s involvement in the Vietnam War as well as the civil rights movement. Many critics believe that Burden’s work stands in opposition to the atrocities committed during that decade, while the artist himself notes that, “Art doesn’t have a purpose. It’s a free spot in society, where you can do anything. I don’t think my pieces provide answers, they just ask questions, they don’t have an end in themselves. But they certainly raise questions.”[15]
Towards the end of the decade Burden moved away from performance pieces and began to focus on installation works, though not as explicitly violent they maintained a palpable political discourse.[16]
III. Violence: Implied and Actual
Ana Mendieta and Chris Burden use violence upon the self to convey ideologies in their works. A central distinction between their pieces is the use of implied violence, by the former, and the use of actual violence, by the latter. In order to assess the works under this criterion is it important to establish a valid definition of violence. For the purpose of this essay violence will be defined as “behaviours involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.”[17] Within the analysis of violence an examination of individual works as statements of social critique, the abject and gender will be undertaken.
Social Critique
During the 1970s, Mendieta and Burden created works that responded to the social and political climate of the time. Two works that exemplify such social critique are Mendieta’s Untitled (Rape Scene)[18] (1973) and Burden’s Five Day Locker Piece (1971).
In 1973, Mendieta invited a group of classmates from the University of Iowa, predominantly male, to her apartment. They arrived to find the artist’s naked body tied up and bent over a table covered in fake blood in a forensic recreation of a crime committed on campus just months earlier.[19] As with most performance art, the act was preserved through photography.
In presenting her own body as that of the victim’s Mendieta not only challenged art taboos but also confronted the social conditions that allowed for such a crime to occur. In the piece, “[t]he audience was forced to reflect on its responsibility; its empathy was elicited and translated to the space of awareness in which sexual violence could be addressed.”[20] Rape Scene condemns sexual violence by hurling the deplorable act in the audience’s face, yet the artist evades the dimension of self-inflicted violence, as noted by Adrian Heathfield in the Ana Mendieta: Traces exhibition catalogue: “She addressed patriarchal violence head on in these actions, though her work sidestepped the masochism implied in the repeated self-openings of her body-art compatriots.”[21] Mendieta presented her feminist ideologies, which developed parallel to those of the feminist art community in New York (which she did not formally join until 1975), by implying violence on her body.[22]
On 26 April 1971, Burden locked himself in a locker two feet high by two feet wide by two feet deep for five days. In the locker above were five gallons of drinking water and the in locker bellow an equivalent but empty receptacle. Some believed he was contesting individual freedom in a decade of racism and war,[23] while others believed that his performance was “a spiritual exercise without the religion, expect for the faith demanded of the performance and onlookers alike.”[24] Burden was conscious of the reflexive nature of his work and as such wanted to present something “clean”. In statements regarding Five Day Locker Piece, he notes “When I think of [the pieces] I try to make them sort of clean, so they are not formless, with a lot of separate parts. They are pretty crisp and you can read them pretty quickly, even the ones that take place over a long period of time.”[25] Through violence on the self, in the form of starvation, potential asphyxiation and pain, Burden prompts collective introspection as to the state of mankind, which is not unlike that incited by Mendieta’s Rape Scene.
The Abject
In addition to producing work that expresses social critique, Mendieta and Burden use implied violence and actual violence on the body to display the abject. In Amending the Abject Body, Deborah Caslav Covino synthesises Julia Kristeva’s notion of the abject as that which is intolerable and violates “the desires and hopes for the ‘clean and proper’ body, thus making the boundaries and limitation of our selfhood ambiguous, and indicating our physical wasting and ultimate death.”[26] In this case, the abject is tied closely with societies’ ideas of mortality and accountability over the body. Through Untitled (Self-Portrait with Blood)[27] (1973) and Shoot (1971) Mendieta and Burden demonstrate the abject within these parameters.
The Abject
In addition to producing work that expresses social critique, Mendieta and Burden use implied violence and actual violence on the body to display the abject. In Amending the Abject Body, Deborah Caslav Covino synthesises Julia Kristeva’s notion of the abject as that which is intolerable and violates “the desires and hopes for the ‘clean and proper’ body, thus making the boundaries and limitation of our selfhood ambiguous, and indicating our physical wasting and ultimate death.”[26] In this case, the abject is tied closely with societies’ ideas of mortality and accountability over the body. Through Untitled (Self-Portrait with Blood)[27] (1973) and Shoot (1971) Mendieta and Burden demonstrate the abject within these parameters.
In Self-Portrait with Blood, Mendieta covers her face, hair and clothing in stage blood to produce a frontal and personal view of a woman who, through blood-encrusted eyelids, looks back at the viewer. One assumption is that the subject of the photograph has fallen victim to domestic abuse, as with Rape Scene, “her bodily presence demands the recognition of a subject as she makes visible the violent images that contribute to woman’s subjugation.”[28] Yet there is something ceremonious and sacrificial in the way Mendieta presents herself in the portrait, she does not shy away form the camera but confronts it face on, adding a level of martyrdom to the piece. [29] The use of blood, albeit fake, is central to the argument of abjection. Through it, Mendieta presents an “un-clean” body that, whether making a feminist statement of not, “provokes anxiety and reveals the psychic vulnerability” in modern notions of mortality.[30]
In Shoot, Burden challenges human nature’s most basic response of self-preservation by making himself the target of a bullet, “at 7:45 pm I was shot in the left arm by a friend. The bullet was a copper jacket .22 long rifle. My friend was standing about fifteen feet from me.”[31] The piece was performed in front of a small group of people, but word got out and it became one of Burden’s best-known pieces.
In the piece the abject is present not only in the violent act of shooting, the slicing open voluntarily and spilling of the artist’s blood, but also in its rapport with the audience: “Burden’s claim is that Shoot functions as a kind of lightning rod for inescapable identifications (‘all the audience cannot help but place themselves into my shoes’).”[32] In doing this, the audience is forced to come to terms with their own mortality. For many, this also meant coming to terms with the atrocities of the Vietnam War that were being witnessed and committed by young American men, not unlike Burden himself.[33] The passivity displayed by Mendieta and Burden in their corresponding pieces further enhances the role of the abject. In a review of Abject Art: Repulsion and Desire in American Art at the Whitney, Celia Y. Weisman states that the authors imply that,
Key to the essence of abject art is its power to explode barriers of consciousness and unleash the experience and emotional realities of the devalued, repressed, and marginalised, those termed ‘outsiders’ by mainstream mentality. [34]
Under this criterion the works of both Mendieta and Burden implicate the audience’s complicity in the creation of the abject by confronting them with their own fascination with violence.[35]
Gender
Furthermore, through implied violence and actual violence Mendieta and Burden address the social constructs of femininity and masculinity. Beginning in the 1960s and continuing into the 1970s, gender roles and sexual identity became highly contested topics in art and art theory.[36] By the late sixties the feminist movement had evolved from women fighting for equal status in the art world to asserting essential differences between the sexes and establishing separate fields.[37] Works by Mendieta and Burden that have encouraged debate over the identity of the female body and the identity of the male body include the series Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints)[38] (1972) and White Light/White Heat (1975).
In the piece the abject is present not only in the violent act of shooting, the slicing open voluntarily and spilling of the artist’s blood, but also in its rapport with the audience: “Burden’s claim is that Shoot functions as a kind of lightning rod for inescapable identifications (‘all the audience cannot help but place themselves into my shoes’).”[32] In doing this, the audience is forced to come to terms with their own mortality. For many, this also meant coming to terms with the atrocities of the Vietnam War that were being witnessed and committed by young American men, not unlike Burden himself.[33] The passivity displayed by Mendieta and Burden in their corresponding pieces further enhances the role of the abject. In a review of Abject Art: Repulsion and Desire in American Art at the Whitney, Celia Y. Weisman states that the authors imply that,
Key to the essence of abject art is its power to explode barriers of consciousness and unleash the experience and emotional realities of the devalued, repressed, and marginalised, those termed ‘outsiders’ by mainstream mentality. [34]
Under this criterion the works of both Mendieta and Burden implicate the audience’s complicity in the creation of the abject by confronting them with their own fascination with violence.[35]
Gender
Furthermore, through implied violence and actual violence Mendieta and Burden address the social constructs of femininity and masculinity. Beginning in the 1960s and continuing into the 1970s, gender roles and sexual identity became highly contested topics in art and art theory.[36] By the late sixties the feminist movement had evolved from women fighting for equal status in the art world to asserting essential differences between the sexes and establishing separate fields.[37] Works by Mendieta and Burden that have encouraged debate over the identity of the female body and the identity of the male body include the series Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints)[38] (1972) and White Light/White Heat (1975).
Of the pieces by Mendieta mentioned in this essay, Glass on Body Imprints presents an argument against the statement of her use of implied violence. Although the purpose of the piece might not be physical pain, she undeniably experienced physical discomfort to create it.[39] Speculation around the series suggests that Mendieta was, like in the pieces previously mentioned, creating an illusion of violence, as Kelley Baum remarks:
[Glass on Body Imprints] creates the illusion of a second order of violence, one involving an unseen (or wholly imaginary) assailant. The temporality of this violence differs from image to image. While some of the photographs suggest a brutal act already completed (a blow, perhaps, that has caused the artists face to bruise and swell), others resemble snapshots captured at the height of the assault.[40]
From another perspective, the series can be seen as a parody of the male gaze. She objectifies herself as she applies the glass to her body by distorting and exaggerating the features of the female body that are valued in patriarchal society.[41]
[Glass on Body Imprints] creates the illusion of a second order of violence, one involving an unseen (or wholly imaginary) assailant. The temporality of this violence differs from image to image. While some of the photographs suggest a brutal act already completed (a blow, perhaps, that has caused the artists face to bruise and swell), others resemble snapshots captured at the height of the assault.[40]
From another perspective, the series can be seen as a parody of the male gaze. She objectifies herself as she applies the glass to her body by distorting and exaggerating the features of the female body that are valued in patriarchal society.[41]
The discourse of masculinity in White Light/White Heat is not as apparent as its counterpart in Glass on Body Imprints, but it is nevertheless present. For 22 days Burden lay on a triangular platform built in the corner of Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York. For the duration of the piece the artist did not eat, speak or come down. Like Five Day Locker, Burden inflicts violence on his body by denying himself food, movement and human interaction, he “presented the public with a subtle, but vital discourse on, and experience of, the conditions of survival.”[42] Although Burden and his acts have often been described as examples of “male delusions of grandeur” and “classic masculine hubris,” this piece in particular is seldom mentioned as such.[43] As noted by Patrick Anderson, however, this work pushes the boundaries of masculinity by “constructing an idealized male body whose durability as the icon of the normative subject is beyond reproach or impeachment.”[44] By denying himself the most basic human needs, the artist emphasises the indestructibility and supremacy of the male body.[45]
IV. Conclusion
Mendieta creates an illusion of violence inflicted on the body and in doing so makes clear statements against sexual violence, domestic abuse and the oppressive nature of the patriarchal society. On the other hand, the statements Burden makes in his work are much more ambiguous and often subject to interpretation. Burden, unlike Mendieta, made few declarations about the specific ideological charge of his pieces and as a result his works often have ideologies thrust upon them. Theories of the meaning of his pieces include contestations of personal freedom, protest against the Vietnam War and the violence of the civil rights movement, and declarations of masculinity.
Early 1970s performance art provided a platform for budding artists to express ideologies through their bodies. Through implied violence and actual violence on the body, Ana Mendieta and Chris Burden produced pieces that challenged taboos, pushed artistic boundaries, and invited introspection. Within their respective uses of violence, Mendieta and Burden create statements of social critique, the abject and gender.
IV. Conclusion
Mendieta creates an illusion of violence inflicted on the body and in doing so makes clear statements against sexual violence, domestic abuse and the oppressive nature of the patriarchal society. On the other hand, the statements Burden makes in his work are much more ambiguous and often subject to interpretation. Burden, unlike Mendieta, made few declarations about the specific ideological charge of his pieces and as a result his works often have ideologies thrust upon them. Theories of the meaning of his pieces include contestations of personal freedom, protest against the Vietnam War and the violence of the civil rights movement, and declarations of masculinity.
Early 1970s performance art provided a platform for budding artists to express ideologies through their bodies. Through implied violence and actual violence on the body, Ana Mendieta and Chris Burden produced pieces that challenged taboos, pushed artistic boundaries, and invited introspection. Within their respective uses of violence, Mendieta and Burden create statements of social critique, the abject and gender.
Appendix A
Five Day Locker Piece, 1971.
University of California, Irvine, California, USA.
April 26 to 30, 1971.
“I was locked in locker number 5 for five consecutive days and did not leave the locker during this time. The locker measured two feet high, two feet wide and three feet deep. I stopped eating several days prior to entry. The locker directly above me contained five gallons of bottled water, the locker below me contained an empty five gallon bottle.”
Shoot, 1971.
F Space, Santa Ana, California, USA.
November 19, 1971.
“At 7:45 pm I was shot in the left arm by a friend. The bullet was a copper jacket .22 rifle. My friend was standing about 15 feet from me.”
White Light/White Heat, 1975.
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, USA.
February 8 to March 1, 1975.
“For my one-man show at Ronal Feldman, I requested that a large triangular platform be constructed in the southeast corner of the gallery. The platform was ten feet above the floor and two feet below the ceiling; the outer edge measured 18 feet across. The size and height of the platform were determined by the requirement that I be able to lie flat without being visible from any point in the gallery. For 22 days, the duration of the show, I lay on the platform. During the entire piece, I did not eat, talk or come down. I did not see anyone and no one saw me.”
Five Day Locker Piece, 1971.
University of California, Irvine, California, USA.
April 26 to 30, 1971.
“I was locked in locker number 5 for five consecutive days and did not leave the locker during this time. The locker measured two feet high, two feet wide and three feet deep. I stopped eating several days prior to entry. The locker directly above me contained five gallons of bottled water, the locker below me contained an empty five gallon bottle.”
Shoot, 1971.
F Space, Santa Ana, California, USA.
November 19, 1971.
“At 7:45 pm I was shot in the left arm by a friend. The bullet was a copper jacket .22 rifle. My friend was standing about 15 feet from me.”
White Light/White Heat, 1975.
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, USA.
February 8 to March 1, 1975.
“For my one-man show at Ronal Feldman, I requested that a large triangular platform be constructed in the southeast corner of the gallery. The platform was ten feet above the floor and two feet below the ceiling; the outer edge measured 18 feet across. The size and height of the platform were determined by the requirement that I be able to lie flat without being visible from any point in the gallery. For 22 days, the duration of the show, I lay on the platform. During the entire piece, I did not eat, talk or come down. I did not see anyone and no one saw me.”
1] Pierre Saurisse, “Neo-Dada and Fluxus” (Lecture at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London, UK, 15 October 2013).
[2] Kristine Stiles, “Introduction to Performance Art,” in Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, eds. Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 798.
[3] Willoughby Sharp, “Body Works,” Avalanche (Fall 1970): 14-17.
[4] Hal Foster et al., Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 2nd ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 2011), 609.
[5] Jane Blocker, Where is Ana Mendieta? Identity, Performativity, and Exile (London: Duke University Press, 1999), 51.
[6] Ibid., 52-53.
[7] Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective. Curated by Petra Barreras del Rio and John Perreault (New York: New Museum, 1987). Catalogue of an exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, November 20, 1987 through January 24, 1988, 28.
[8] Kaira M. Cabañas, “Ana Mendieta: ‘Pain of Cuba, body I am.’” Woman’s Art Journal
20, no. 1 (Spring-Summer, 1999): 12, accessed 12 October 2013,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1358840.
[9] Susan Best, “The Serial Spaces of Ana Mendieta,” Art History 30, no. 1 (February 2007): 60-61.
[10] Ana Mendieta: Traces. Curated by Stephanie Rosenthal. London: Hayward Publishing Southbank Centre, 2013. Guide of exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, September 24 through December 15, 2013.
[11] Blocker, Where is Ana Mendieta?, 10.
[12] “Chris Burden,” Gagosian Galley, Artist’s Biography. Accessed 12 October 2013, www.gagosian.com/artists/chris-burden-2.
[13] Peter Schjeldal, “Performance: Chris Burden and the Limits of Art,” The New Yorker, 14 May 2007, accessed 13 October 2013,
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/artworld/2007/05/14/070514craw_artworld_schjeldahl.
[14] John-Paul Stonard, “Burden, Chris,” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed 14 October 2013, http://oxfordonline.com/subsbriber/article/grove/art/T096523.
[15] Chris Burden, “Untitled Statements,” in Jan Butterfield, “Chris Burden: Through the
Night Softly,” Art Magazine 49, no.7 (March 1975): 68-72. In Theories and
Documents of Contemporary Art, eds. Stiles and Selz, 899.
[16] See Stonard, “Burden, Chris”. For Burden’s statements on the performances mentioned in this essay, see Appendix A.
[17] Oxford Dictionaries, accessed 15 October 2013, http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/violence.
[18] From this point forward referred to as Rape Scene.
[19] See Stephanie Rosenthal, Ana Mendieta: Traces.
[20] Cabañas, “Ana Mendieta: ‘Pain of Cuba, body I am’,” 12.
[21] Adrian Heathfield, “Embers,” in Ana Mendieta: Traces, ed. Stephanie Rosenthal, 21.
[22] Kelly Baum, “Shapely Shapelessness: Ana Mendieta’s ‘Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints-Face)’, 1972,” Record of the Princeton Art Museum 67 (June 2008), 84-86.
[23] See Christopher Knight, “Chris Burden and the Potential for Catastrophe,” Art Issue no. 52 (March 1998).
[24] Hal Foster et al., Art Since 1900, 612.
[25] Burden, “Untitled Statements,” 900.
[26] Deborah Caslav Covino, “Abjection,” in Amending the Abject Body: Aesthetics in Medicine and
Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), 17, accessed 15 October 2013, http://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/61009.pdf.
[27] From this point forward referred to as Self Portrait with Blood.
[28] Cabañas, “Ana Mendieta: ‘Pain of Cuba, body I am’,” 14.
[29] See Stephanie Rosenthal, Ana Mendieta: Traces.
[30] Gutierrez-Albilla and Julian Daniel, “Desublimating the Body: Abjection and the politics of feminist and queer subjectivities in contemporary art,” Angelaki: Journal Of The Theoretical Humanities 13 no.1 (April 2008): 65-84.
[31] Frazer Ward, “Gray Zone: Watching Shoot,” October no. 95 (Winter 2001): 114.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Celia Y. Weisman, “Review of Abject Art: Repulsion and Desire in American Art by Craig House, Leslie C. Jones, Simon Taylor and Jack Ben-Levi,” Women’s Art Journal 17, no. 2 (Autumn 1996-Winter 1997): 59-60, accessed 15 October 2013, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1358482.
[35] See Frazer Ward, “Gray Zone: Watching Shoot”.
[36] Hal Foster et al., Art Since 1900, 614.
[37] Ibid., 614.
[38] From this point forward referred to as Glass on Body Imprints.
[39] Baum, “Shapely Shapelessness: Ana Mendieta’s ‘Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints-Face)’, 1972,” 81.
[40] Ibid., 82.
[41] Clara Escoda Agusti, “‘I Carve Myself Into My Hands’: The Body Experienced From Within Ana Mendieta’s Work and Migdali Cruz’s Miriam’s Flowers,” Hispanic Review 75, no.3 (Summer 2007): 304-305, accessed 12 October 2013, http://search.proquest.com/docview/227283516?accountid=13958.
[42] Kristine Stiles, “Burden of Light,” Chris Burden: A Locus+ Book, coordinated by Fred Hoffman in association with Gagosian Gallery, eds. Jon Bewley and Jonty Tarbuck (London: Thames Hudson, 2007), 24.
[43] Robert Storr, “Immanent Domain,” 41.
[44] Patrick Anderson, “Trying Ordeal: Henry Tanner and Chris Burden in the Event of Subjectivity,” Radical History Review 98 (Spring 2007): 150.
[45] Ibid., 150.
[2] Kristine Stiles, “Introduction to Performance Art,” in Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, eds. Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 798.
[3] Willoughby Sharp, “Body Works,” Avalanche (Fall 1970): 14-17.
[4] Hal Foster et al., Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 2nd ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 2011), 609.
[5] Jane Blocker, Where is Ana Mendieta? Identity, Performativity, and Exile (London: Duke University Press, 1999), 51.
[6] Ibid., 52-53.
[7] Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective. Curated by Petra Barreras del Rio and John Perreault (New York: New Museum, 1987). Catalogue of an exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, November 20, 1987 through January 24, 1988, 28.
[8] Kaira M. Cabañas, “Ana Mendieta: ‘Pain of Cuba, body I am.’” Woman’s Art Journal
20, no. 1 (Spring-Summer, 1999): 12, accessed 12 October 2013,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1358840.
[9] Susan Best, “The Serial Spaces of Ana Mendieta,” Art History 30, no. 1 (February 2007): 60-61.
[10] Ana Mendieta: Traces. Curated by Stephanie Rosenthal. London: Hayward Publishing Southbank Centre, 2013. Guide of exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, September 24 through December 15, 2013.
[11] Blocker, Where is Ana Mendieta?, 10.
[12] “Chris Burden,” Gagosian Galley, Artist’s Biography. Accessed 12 October 2013, www.gagosian.com/artists/chris-burden-2.
[13] Peter Schjeldal, “Performance: Chris Burden and the Limits of Art,” The New Yorker, 14 May 2007, accessed 13 October 2013,
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/artworld/2007/05/14/070514craw_artworld_schjeldahl.
[14] John-Paul Stonard, “Burden, Chris,” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed 14 October 2013, http://oxfordonline.com/subsbriber/article/grove/art/T096523.
[15] Chris Burden, “Untitled Statements,” in Jan Butterfield, “Chris Burden: Through the
Night Softly,” Art Magazine 49, no.7 (March 1975): 68-72. In Theories and
Documents of Contemporary Art, eds. Stiles and Selz, 899.
[16] See Stonard, “Burden, Chris”. For Burden’s statements on the performances mentioned in this essay, see Appendix A.
[17] Oxford Dictionaries, accessed 15 October 2013, http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/violence.
[18] From this point forward referred to as Rape Scene.
[19] See Stephanie Rosenthal, Ana Mendieta: Traces.
[20] Cabañas, “Ana Mendieta: ‘Pain of Cuba, body I am’,” 12.
[21] Adrian Heathfield, “Embers,” in Ana Mendieta: Traces, ed. Stephanie Rosenthal, 21.
[22] Kelly Baum, “Shapely Shapelessness: Ana Mendieta’s ‘Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints-Face)’, 1972,” Record of the Princeton Art Museum 67 (June 2008), 84-86.
[23] See Christopher Knight, “Chris Burden and the Potential for Catastrophe,” Art Issue no. 52 (March 1998).
[24] Hal Foster et al., Art Since 1900, 612.
[25] Burden, “Untitled Statements,” 900.
[26] Deborah Caslav Covino, “Abjection,” in Amending the Abject Body: Aesthetics in Medicine and
Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), 17, accessed 15 October 2013, http://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/61009.pdf.
[27] From this point forward referred to as Self Portrait with Blood.
[28] Cabañas, “Ana Mendieta: ‘Pain of Cuba, body I am’,” 14.
[29] See Stephanie Rosenthal, Ana Mendieta: Traces.
[30] Gutierrez-Albilla and Julian Daniel, “Desublimating the Body: Abjection and the politics of feminist and queer subjectivities in contemporary art,” Angelaki: Journal Of The Theoretical Humanities 13 no.1 (April 2008): 65-84.
[31] Frazer Ward, “Gray Zone: Watching Shoot,” October no. 95 (Winter 2001): 114.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Celia Y. Weisman, “Review of Abject Art: Repulsion and Desire in American Art by Craig House, Leslie C. Jones, Simon Taylor and Jack Ben-Levi,” Women’s Art Journal 17, no. 2 (Autumn 1996-Winter 1997): 59-60, accessed 15 October 2013, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1358482.
[35] See Frazer Ward, “Gray Zone: Watching Shoot”.
[36] Hal Foster et al., Art Since 1900, 614.
[37] Ibid., 614.
[38] From this point forward referred to as Glass on Body Imprints.
[39] Baum, “Shapely Shapelessness: Ana Mendieta’s ‘Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints-Face)’, 1972,” 81.
[40] Ibid., 82.
[41] Clara Escoda Agusti, “‘I Carve Myself Into My Hands’: The Body Experienced From Within Ana Mendieta’s Work and Migdali Cruz’s Miriam’s Flowers,” Hispanic Review 75, no.3 (Summer 2007): 304-305, accessed 12 October 2013, http://search.proquest.com/docview/227283516?accountid=13958.
[42] Kristine Stiles, “Burden of Light,” Chris Burden: A Locus+ Book, coordinated by Fred Hoffman in association with Gagosian Gallery, eds. Jon Bewley and Jonty Tarbuck (London: Thames Hudson, 2007), 24.
[43] Robert Storr, “Immanent Domain,” 41.
[44] Patrick Anderson, “Trying Ordeal: Henry Tanner and Chris Burden in the Event of Subjectivity,” Radical History Review 98 (Spring 2007): 150.
[45] Ibid., 150.