Results for “performance”
The NEA Four and the Culture Wars
After performance artists — among them Karen Finley — had NEA grants vetoed as too explicit, the ensuing fight produced 'NEA v. Finley', a Supreme Court case at the heart of debates over public funding and artistic freedom.
Deborah De Robertis's Museum Interventions
Deborah De Robertis stages unauthorised performances before canonical artworks — Courbet's 'Origin of the World', the Mona Lisa — exposing her body to reflect the museum's gaze back on itself, and drawing repeated police complaints.
Tony Labat's 'Kidnap Attempt'
In 1978, Tony Labat and Mike Osterhout staged the attempted kidnapping of a public official as a work of political performance art — an intervention in public space that deliberately blurred the line between art, protest, and crime. The action ultimately failed.
Pussy Riot: Punk Prayer on Trial
In 2012 members of the feminist collective Pussy Riot performed a 'Punk Prayer' against Vladimir Putin in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Three were convicted of 'hooliganism motivated by religious hatred' and imprisoned.
Ulay: 'There Is a Criminal Touch to Art'
In 1976 the artist Ulay walked into a Berlin museum, took Carl Spitzweg's 'The Poor Poet' — reputedly Hitler's favourite painting — and hung it in the home of a Turkish immigrant family, then phoned the museum to confess. The act was the artwork.
Tony Labat
A Cuban-born, San Francisco-based artist working across performance, video, sculpture and installation, Labat has spent his career probing media, criminality, and the body politic. He emerged from the politically charged California performance scene of the 1970s — alongside figures like Chris Burden, Suzanne Lacy, and ASCO — that pushed art out of the gallery and into public life. His 1978 collaboration with Mike Osterhout, 'Kidnap Attempt', staged the attempted abduction of a public official as political performance, deliberately collapsing the boundary between an artwork and a real crime.
Tania Bruguera
Cuban performance artist whose politically engaged 'arte útil' has led to repeated detentions and the confiscation of her passport by Cuban authorities, making her a symbol of the artist's confrontation with the state.
Karen Finley
American performance artist and one of the 'NEA Four' whose grants were vetoed as too explicit, prompting the landmark Supreme Court case 'NEA v. Finley' at the heart of debates over public funding and artistic freedom.
Asco
Founded in East Los Angeles in 1972, Asco — Spanish for 'disgust' or 'nausea' — was a groundbreaking Chicano art collective whose core members included Harry Gamboa Jr., Gronk, Willie F. Herrón III, and Patssi Valdez. Emerging from the aftermath of the Chicano Moratorium and amid widespread police violence, racism, and the Vietnam War, the group rejected both mainstream art institutions and the limitations of traditional political muralism. Instead, they embraced performance, conceptual art, photography, film, and public intervention to challenge stereotypes and redefine what Chicano art could be. Asco became famous for provocative works that blurred the line between art and activism. In their legendary 'Spray Paint LACMA' (1972), members tagged their names on a bridge at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art after being told that Chicanos didn't make 'fine art'. Their 'No Movies' series staged elaborate stills from fictional films, satirizing Hollywood's exclusion and stereotyping of Latinos, while performances such as 'Walking Mural' and 'Instant Mural' transformed the streets of East L.A. into living galleries. Although largely ignored by major museums during their active years (1972–1987), Asco's influence has grown dramatically. Their work has since been exhibited by major institutions, including LACMA, and they are now recognized as pioneers of conceptual art, performance, and institutional critique. In 2025, the documentary 'ASCO: Without Permission' brought renewed attention to the group's remarkable legacy and lasting impact on generations of artists.
David Wojnarowicz
David Wojnarowicz (1954–1992) was an American artist, writer, filmmaker, photographer, and AIDS activist whose work became one of the most powerful artistic indictments of censorship, government neglect, and social injustice in the late twentieth century. Raised amid poverty and abuse before spending time homeless and hustling on the streets of New York, Wojnarowicz transformed his experiences on society's margins into a fiercely original body of work that blended painting, photography, collage, film, performance, and autobiographical writing. A central figure of New York's East Village art scene in the 1980s, he believed art should confront power rather than comfort it. For followers of Crimes of Art, Wojnarowicz occupies a unique place where art, censorship, and the law collide. His work challenged institutions ranging from the National Endowment for the Arts to conservative political organizations during the height of America's culture wars. In 1990, he successfully sued the American Family Association after it distributed altered excerpts of his work to portray him as obscene, winning a landmark case that affirmed artists could fight back against the deliberate misrepresentation of their work. His art was inseparable from activism. Following his HIV diagnosis in 1988 and the death of his mentor and partner, photographer Peter Hujar, Wojnarowicz produced emotionally charged works condemning the U.S. government's indifference to the AIDS epidemic. Images of burning maps, falling buffalo, houses in flames, stitched mouths, and fragmented bodies became symbols of a society abandoning its most vulnerable citizens. His memoir 'Close to the Knives' remains one of the defining literary accounts of the AIDS crisis and artistic resistance. Even after his death from AIDS-related illness in 1992 at the age of thirty-seven, controversy continued to follow his work. In 2010, the Smithsonian Institution removed his short film 'A Fire in My Belly' from an exhibition after political pressure from conservative groups over a brief scene depicting ants crawling across a crucifix. The incident reignited a national debate over artistic freedom, censorship, religion, and public funding for the arts, cementing Wojnarowicz's legacy as an artist whose work continued to challenge authority long after his death. Today, David Wojnarowicz is recognized as one of the most influential American artists of his generation. His work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and major institutions worldwide. More than three decades after his death, his uncompromising vision continues to inspire artists, activists, and anyone interested in the uneasy relationship between creativity, power, and the law.
Deborah De Robertis
A Luxembourgish performance artist who stages unauthorised interventions in front of canonical artworks — most famously exposing herself before Courbet's 'The Origin of the World' at the Musée d'Orsay and beneath the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. Her work turns the museum into a stage and the viewer's gaze back on itself, and has repeatedly drawn police complaints, arrests, and charges of sexual exhibitionism — making her a lightning rod in debates over the female body, censorship, and who is permitted to act inside the museum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0Sr7CblcVQ
Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen)
A pioneering German performance artist, best known for his long collaboration and relationship with Marina Abramović. Before that partnership, Ulay staged one of the most audacious works in the history of art crime: in 1976 he walked into a Berlin museum, stole a beloved painting, and rehung it in the home of a working-class immigrant family as a live artwork about ownership, value, and belonging.
Pussy Riot
Russian feminist protest-art collective whose 2012 'Punk Prayer' in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour led to the imprisonment of several members for 'hooliganism' — one of the defining art-censorship cases of the 21st century.
Ron Athey
American performance artist whose blood-based, body-modification works became a flashpoint in the 1990s culture wars, fuelling congressional attacks on the National Endowment for the Arts.
Voina
Few contemporary art groups have generated as much controversy—or as many criminal charges—as Voina ("War"), the Russian performance art collective founded in 2007. Part political activists, part conceptual artists, and part provocateurs, the group rejected galleries, museums, and the commercial art world in favor of disruptive public performances that challenged the authority of the Russian state. Voina believed that the artwork wasn't an object—it was the event itself. Their performances ranged from surreal pranks to acts of vandalism, often ending with arrests and international headlines. Among their most famous actions was Dick Captured by the FSB (2010), in which they painted a 65-meter phallus on a drawbridge in St. Petersburg. When the bridge opened, the image stood erect, pointing directly at the headquarters of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). The work became an instant symbol of artistic defiance and, remarkably, later won Russia's state-sponsored Innovation Prize for contemporary art. Other performances were even more confrontational. Members overturned police cars, staged mock executions, interrupted court proceedings with punk concerts, welded shut the doors of an elite restaurant, and organized provocative demonstrations criticizing corruption, police brutality, censorship, and political repression. More than a dozen criminal cases were eventually brought against members of the collective. The group's history also intersected with another famous activist collective. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Pyotr Verzilov were early members of Voina before splitting from the group in 2009. Two years later, Tolokonnikova co-founded Pussy Riot, whose anti-Putin protest inside Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour attracted worldwide attention. Their performances intentionally erased the boundary between art, activism, and crime, forcing audiences to confront uncomfortable questions about power, authority, and free expression. Voina demonstrated that in the twenty-first century, one of the most powerful canvases wasn't a museum wall—it was the street itself.
Neue Nationalgalerie
Mies van der Rohe's Berlin temple of modern art, and the stage for Ulay's 1976 'art crime' performance.
Louvre Heist Update: Mastermind Reportedly Told Crew They “Could Have Taken More”
Newly released suspect statements describe a post-heist “performance review” from an unidentified organizer known only as “Jo” — who thought the crew left valuable pieces behind.
The Trouble With 'Fountain'
Marcel Duchamp's 'Fountain' — a signed urinal that founded conceptual art — has repeatedly tempted performance artist Pierre Pinoncelli to urinate in it and, later, attack it with a hammer.
My Friend Ate My Art!
During an exhibition of Nick Dwyer's installation 'Shadow Searching: ChatGPT Psychosis', a fellow student reportedly consumed part of the artwork — turning a conceptual piece into his own hungry performance.
When Vandalism Became Performance Art
During a Jacques Lacan exhibition, artist Deborah De Robertis and collaborators wrote 'ME TOO' in red marker across Courbet's 'The Origin of the World' and targeted works by Louise Bourgeois and others.
Chocolate, Politics, and a Rothko
Days after Vladimir Umanets defaced a Rothko at Tate Modern, performance artist Jubilee Brown scrawled his name across another Rothko, 'Black on Maroon', using paint mixed with chocolate.
Cattelan Banana too Tempting for Hungy Student
Days after Maurizio Cattelan's 'Comedian' — a banana duct-taped to a wall — debuted, performance artist David Datuna peeled it off and ate it in front of stunned visitors.