The tête-à-tête of performance in fashion and art

Abstract

[Abstract] Performance art has always been considered a treat to Modernist Art; it was theatrical in the pejorative sense Michael Fried gave to the word. When we look at his arguments we might conclude that not alone performance art or minimal art is theatrical but fashion as well. Of course Fried did not talk about fashion, neither did Greenberg, but both saw it probably as belonging to mass culture, which was a treat to the autonomy of the so called high art as well. In my presentation I want to look more closely to performance in art and performance in fashion starting in the time Fried published his «Art and Objecthood», the end of the sixties, till about three decades later. I will concentrate more in particular on the early moment and compare this with the situation of the nineties. What has changed in the development of performance art and fashion and in their relation? Performance art in the sixties and seventies tried to stay as far as possible from the theatrical sign or to use the word of the time: the sign of the spectacle. One could typify this early moment of performance art as the moment of the blank sign while fashion felt more at home in the sign of spectacle. In the nineties the situation has changed, partly due to social circumstances, partly due to a change of focus from the catwalk as instrumental for fashion to the catwalk as a autonomous event. In my presentation I will explain the opposition of a blank sign and the sign of the spectacle and give examples of first the gap and later the affinity of performance in art and performance in fashion