Contract With The Skin: Masochism, Performance Art, and the 1970s

by Kathy O'Dell

Having yourself shot. Putting out fires with your bare hands and feet. Biting your own body and photographing the marks. Sewing your own mouth shut. These seemingly aberrant acts were committed by performance artists during the 1970s. Why would anyone do these things? What do these kinds of masochistic performances tell us about the social and historical context in which they occurred? Focusing on 1970s performance artists Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Gina Pane, and collaborators Marina Abramovic/Ulay as well as those with similar sensibilities from the late 1980s onward (Bob Flanagan, David Wojnarowicz, Simon Leung, Catherine Opic, Ron Athey, Lutz Bacher, and Robby Garfinkel), O'Dell provides photographic documentation of performances and quotations from interviews with many of the artists. Throughout, O'Dell asks what we can do about the institutionalized forms of masochism for which these performances are metaphors.

Genres: Art

144 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1998

Reviews

[Tobias Wiggins · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was anticipating a text that used psychoanalysis in its reading of masochistic body art and limit experience. Unfortunately o'dell often misinterprets theory, or in its quite literal use, ends up feeling quite reductionist. She traverses many interesting works, and is a good introduction as such, but lacks intersectionality and critical analysis of race and gender (among other social political issues clearly grappled with in the performance pieces she draws upon)

[Callie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is definitely an academic art book. If you're not prepared to read an academic art book, abort now. If you're like me and really don't need more Freud in your life, abort now. If you can't tolerate misuse of the term 'masochism,' abort now.

Those warnings aside, O'Dell synthesizes across fields to highlight the contracts inherent in 70s performance art, and their connections to the Vietnam war. I picked up this book because I was interested in performances of pain, and it delivered on providing a rich list of relevant work from that time period of US. I not only read this book all the way through (which I wasn't expecting), but also went back and skimmed it a few months later. It passes the test of making me think and re-think and mental revise; her ideas around contracts of bodies and the relationships between performers and viewers will stick with me.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very short book but I found it useful in places for an essay I am currently writing. Lots of focus on psychoanalysis though.

[Michael Dipietro · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a little bit of a let down for its intense focus on psychoanalysis. I think at times, Kathy O'Dell's interpretations get a little wacky and overuse/misuse references to Freud and Lacan. And a LOT of more interesting perspectives get left out because of that.

[Erdem Tasdelen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really like these artists but I find this heavily psychoanalytic reading of their work too literal.