Customer Reviews

Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present (World of Art)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Goldberg's is an excellent, well-researched, and interesting text that documents the history of a most misunderstood medium: performance art. Proceeding in a sure-footed way from the early, combative, theatrical efforts of the Italian Futurists, then to Dadaism, then on to the dances of Oskar Schlemmer, to the 1960s "happenings", up until the end of the 1980s...Goldberg covers it all. She gives essential and pertinent cultural information that facilitates the reader's understanding of the "how" and the "why" of performance art. This book is a must-have for art and cultural historians, as well as anyone who wants to broaden their knowledge of the key figures and events relating to art of the modern and postmodern eras.

OK, the book was first printed in 1979 and nothing new has been added since then. I would recommend "Outside the Frame" by Robin Brentano instead or Richard Martel's "Out of Action".

Besiedes, the idea that Leondardo da Vinci made performance art is crap...

I needed to buy this book for a class I'm taking and not only was it way cheaper than my university book store but it came right on time and was in proper packaging. The book was in perfect condition and I'm very pleased with the reading so far!

An important work and fundamental source. One can find a lot of interesting and wide spectrum type information about the performance. This is a very good handbook wchich completely fulfill my expectations.

Interesting historical overview but full of holes (For instance, how does Goldberg manage NOT to mention Tehching Hsieh?)...you should also read another book on the topic to get a fuller picture.

I was just kind of fascinated with Performance art when I first bought the book, but now it's all I can think about. This book is awesome for anyone that is even remotely interested in performance art. Yes the cover seems a bit low-fi, but the content inside is engaging and awesome!

This book is a very informative. Providing a comprehensive history of performance art. This book gave me information about performance that I never knew before. This book is for a class and I feel personally that this is a very good teaching tool. From Dada to the present it allows me as a performance artist to see what is there before and what is happening now and be even more informed of what my work is all about. This is a very good and informative book.

This is a valuable documentation of the beginnings of performance art. The histories are at times painstakingly detailed. I appreciate the conceptual discussion and the descriptions of events. So many of these events & performances were fleeting moments with minimal documentation, so the effort to bring all of the details together into a history is significant. This makes a good companion to give context to the numerous manifestos written by the artists themselves. The book covers Italian Futurism, Russian Futurism and Constructivism around the time of the Russian Revolution, DADAism, Surrealism, and Bauhaus, and touches on a range of late 20th century directors & artists.