| Description |
xviii, 362 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm |
| Series |
October books |
|
October books.
|
| Contents |
Preface: Camera, Action -- Introduction. Seeing Difficulties -- 1. Judson Dance Theater in Hindsight -- 2. Sections and Chunks: Serial Time -- 3. Mediating Trio A -- 4. Other Solutions -- 5. Performance Demonstration -- Conclusion: Taking Sides |
| Summary |
"In her dance and performances of the 1960s, Yvonne Rainer famously transformed the performing body - stripped it of special techniques and star status, traded its costumes and leotards for T-shirts and sneakers, and asked it to haul mattresses or recite texts rather than leap or spin. Without discounting these innovations, Carrie Lambert-Beatty argues in Being Watched that the crucial site of Rainer's interventions in the 1960s was less the body of the performer than the eye of the viewer - or rather, the body as offered to the eye. Rainer's art, Lambert-Beatty writes, is structured by a peculiar tension between the body and its display." "Through close readings of Rainer's works of the 1960s - from the often-discussed dance Trio A to lesser known Vietnam war-era protest dances - Lambert-Beatty explores how these performances embodied what Rainer called "the seeing difficulty." (As Rainer said: "Dance is hard to see.") Viewed from this perspective, Rainer's work becomes a bridge between key episodes in postwar art. Lambert-Beatty shows how Rainer's art (and related performance work in Happenings, Fluxus, and Judson Dance Theater) connects with the transformation of the subject-object relation in minimalism and with emerging feminist discourse on the political implications of the objectifying gaze. In a spectacle-soaked era, moreover, when images of war played nightly on the television news, Rainer's work engaged the habits of viewing formed in mass-media America, linking avant-garde art and the wider culture of the 1960s. Rainer is significant, argues Lambert-Beatty, not only as a choreographer but as a sculptor of spectatorship."--BOOK JACKET |
| Notes |
"An October book" |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [269]-347) and index |
| Subject |
Rainer, Yvonne, 1934- -- Criticism and interpretation.
|
|
Choreographers -- United States.
|
|
Dancers -- United States.
|
|
Modern dance.
|
|
Independent filmmakers -- United States.
|
|
Experimental films.
|
|
Art, American -- 20th century.
|
|
Minimal art -- United States.
|
|
Art -- Political aspects -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
|
| LC no. |
2007039854 |
| ISBN |
9780262123013 (hbk. : alk. paper) |
|
