Gutai, a Japanese form of performance art, used the body as a canvas, anticipating the Westernized version of the art form by several decades.

Non-Western performance art developed in its own political context

The medium’s emerging popularity in 1990s China is a perfect example of this. Many Chinese artists incorporated the practice of meditation into their works, combining the Buddhist tradition with various modes of endurance art to comment on divisions within Chinese society and the power of the government.

Japanese artwork often incorporates bold colors, clean lines, and natural subjects

While Japanese art is diverse and continues to adopt new styles and techniques, the Japanese approach to painting nature inspired Georgia O’Keeffe, who was known for depicting the environment in a detailed yet realistic manner. Below is "The Great Wave off Kanagawa," from 1931, by Hokusai.

Performance art, explained

Performance art defies traditional boundaries, existing as a dynamic, live medium where the artist's actions—and sometimes the audience's—become the work itself. Emerging in the early 20th century with movements like Dadaism, performance art has continually evolved to provoke reflection and challenge cultural norms.

Jackson Pollock and others developed 'action painting,' highlighting the creative process

A subcategory of performance art, action painting emerged in 1945 as a way to capture a moment-by-moment view of the creative process through painting. For these pieces, the physical act of painting is as important as the finished product. This short explainer video covers the philosophy behind action painting, as well as exploring the works of several well-known action painters, including Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko.

Performance art depends on the actions of the artist

Part theater, part anarchy, part absurdism, performance art encompasses a whole range of media and genres. The short version is that it’s conceptual, often spontaneous art that is performed live. Performance art is inherently confrontational, challenging societal ideas of what constitutes “fine art,” making it an ideal vehicle for political and protest pieces. It’s closely related to other avant-garde movements like Dada and Futurism.

Pop artist Yayoi Kusama is arguably the most famous living female artist

The Japanese pop artist is one of many figures whose work challenged ideas of traditional fine art. Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Takashi Murakami, and Claes Oldenburg are among the other artists known for defining pop art.

The Guggenheim houses works from some of pop art’s biggest names

British writer and curator Lawrence Alloway was an early champion of pop art—some claim he coined the term in 1958. He organized the 1963 “Six Painters and the Object” exhibition at the Guggenheim, featuring heavy hitters including Johns, Lichtenstein, and Warhol.

Performance art differs from other performances, like dance and theater

While performance art is a very flexible genre, it is defined by several core elements: time, space, the body, and the relationship between the artist and the audience. These elements may be manipulated in infinite ways to convey the artist’s message, such as how endurance performances challenge the limits of the body over long periods of time.

The 30 most important performance artists

Through centering on the human body, performance art can surprise and shock us. This rundown of 30 of its practitioners highlights their individual art and selects an image to showcase their specific style. While some are more clever or conceptual, many are viscerally shocking, including artistic nudity and, in some cases, graphic violence.

Basquiat helped move graffiti from the streets to the galleries

He took graffiti's aesthetics—cryptic slogans, bold colors, and repurposed iconography—and placed them on his canvases, helping to create what some called "post graffiti." These short documentaries, produced in 1982 and 1983, capture the nascent movement as it emerged in the mainstream art world.

Graffiti became an integral part of hip-hop culture

The visual art form began taking off in New York alongside the music of hip-hop. Both were postmodern forms of art that repurposed preexisting materials. For graffiti, that was by using the city as canvas. For rap, that was through sampling. This retrospective not only shows how the two forms intersected, but also how the public perception of both changed over time.

Andy Warhol’s 'Exploding Plastic Inevitable' shows were multimedia performance art

If you wandered into one of Andy Warhol’s "Exploding Plastic Inevitable" events in the 1960s, you might have encountered a Velvet Underground performance, go-go dancers, strobe lights, guerrilla filmmakers asking very personal questions, and mimes. Warhol was on the cutting edge of many art forms, and performance art was no exception.

The 'Old Guitarist' challenged art's standards of beauty

For much of Western art history, the definition of “beauty” in art was dictated by academies rather than personal taste. Artists like Picasso challenged these standards with works considered “ugly” for discarding anatomical accuracy or linear perspective in favor of a feeling.

'The Armory Show' brought modernism and the 'avant-garde' to the US.

He also influenced contemporary artist George Condo

The scale and reach of Picasso and cubism inspired artists and art movements throughout the early to mid-20th century. In fact, his influence can still be seen in artists today. One such artist, George Condo (known for painting the album cover of Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” pictured below), heavily references Picasso’s visual language, transmuting the legendary artist’s geometric shapes and perspectives for a more contemporary audience.

Yakuza gangsters' tattoos often portrayed moments from their lives

Although tattoos have been worn in Japan for centuries, no single group is more famous for their elaborate, full-body tattoos—featuring traditional Japanese art—than Yakuza gangsters. The criminal organization does not use tattoos to mark their association, though. Instead, the scenes are intensely personal.

Prior to his stint as an artworld superstar, Jean-Michel Basquiat played in a punk band with Vincent Gallo.

Dada artists satirized the horrors of World War I

The movement’s early performances were absurd cabarets featuring experimental poetry, avant-garde music, and maskwork. Much of it was reckoning with the growing deathcounts of World War I, with work that often lampooned Western imperialism and supposed rationality.

Graffiti has its own visual language, including simple 'tags,' large block letters, and complex 'pieces.'

‘The Artist Is Present’ is one of the most famous performance pieces in history

The exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art invited visitors to sit in silence in the company of a master performer. Many shed tears or gestured affectionately, claiming to have felt a profound connection with Abramović. (This resource contains some artistic nudity.)

Basquiat's work is often called neoexpressionist

The neoexpressionist movement was a reaction to the minimalism of the 1960s, employing bold colors and brash symbolism to convey emotion and, at times, make political statements. As the style’s name implies, it was a new form of expressionism, a movement popular in the early 20th century.

The 1980s neo-pop movement put pop art back in the zeitgeist

Pop art’s legacy is perhaps best exemplified in its longevity. Long after the end of pop art’s classical phase, a neo-pop revival ushered in a new cohort of artists like Murakami, Hirst, and Koons who brought pop once again to the top. To this day, contemporary pop artists—young and seasoned—command high prices on the open market.

View Jean-Michel Basquiat's artwork

The iconic artist had a short career, but he produced a massive body of work and changed the style of American art by bringing together pop art, graffiti, hip-hop, and punk. His work still hangs in galleries across the world. View scans of the most famous ones here.

Zurich's Cabaret Voltaire was the epicenter of early performance art

In early 20th-century Zurich, one nightclub was the epicenter of avant-garde art and performance: Cabaret Voltaire. Night after night, crowds of artists, writers, philosophers, and others would gather to watch—or participate in—wild, unrehearsed performances that could include anything from sound poems to traditional folk dance. The atmosphere at Club Voltaire was the ideal breeding ground for outside art movements, and it is thought to be the birthplace of Dada, a precursor to performance art.

Indigenous art's influence on pop art often goes uncredited

Keith Haring’s iconic imagery, often known for its accessibility, was deeply inspired by the artwork of the Indigenous people of Australia. Their artwork influenced aspects of Haring's paintings, such as flat block colors and symmetrical compositions. While some critics find Haring to have appropriated their culture, others find his work to be pushing a message of unity and togetherness.

Can anything be performance art?

When you see someone slathering themselves in maple syrup or sitting silently in the corner of a gallery surrounded by yogurt containers, it’s easy to wonder whether there’s anything that can’t be considered performance art. This Artsy piece speaks to various performance artists and attempts to define some guardrails for the medium. The main takeaway? Intention and interpretation are what separate real performance art from people who are just covered in syrup.

O’Keeffe’s first collection of charcoal drawings was influenced by Japanese artists

Prioritizing personal interpretations over literal ones, O’Keeffe’s abstract drawings challenged the classical approach to capturing nature in art. This initial set of drawings caught the attention of art dealer Alfred Stieglitz and forever changed the trajectory of her career.

South Korean artist uses her own body as a canvas

Dain Yoon is a South Korean artist whose whimsical paintings utilizing her body as a canvas have gone viral. See examples of her works where she uses her face and torso to present elaborate, often surreal, visual works.

Keith Haring was inspired by graffiti's accessibility

The visual artist—known for his vibrant pop art—loved how graffiti was a democratic form, available to everyday people who wouldn't otherwise visit museums or galleries. He began drawing chalk murals in New York subway stations, remarking that it was an ideal venue because it attracted a diverse audience.

Pop art brought 'low culture' to the fine art world

Pop art’s embrace of kitsch American pop culture furthered a centuries-long tradition of the visual arts during the second half of the 20th century. Its most famous exemplars, including Andy Warhol, were heirs to a vast tradition they sought to transcend and upend.

In 1974, Norman Mailer touted graffiti as an intellectual art form

The Pulitzer Prize winner explored the style in his 1974 Esquire essay, "The Faith of Graffiti," before expanding on it in a book with 81 photos by Jon Naar. In it, he traces the form back to its ancient roots and compares graffiti writers to Renaissance painters.

Read the New York Times profile of TAKI 183

The 1971 article about the young graffiti artist and his many acolytes exposed the burgeoning subculture to a large audience and also detailed the effort to clean the work from the city's walls. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

After the death of jazz legend Charlie Parker, Beat Generation poet and artist Ted Joans adorned New York's walls with some of its earliest graffiti that read 'Bird lives!'

Appropriation is a common feature of pop art

Many of pop art’s most famous works appropriate objects or (more controversially) artwork and photography with new techniques and contexts, a practice that extends beyond pop into movements like readymade and Dada. Some pop artists, like Elaine Sturtevant, even made copies in partnership with the help of their targets.

The theory behind public art

Proponents of public art, including graffiti, argue that its free access and visibility breaks down the elitism and financial barriers of galleries and museums, allowing people to interact or ignore the work as they see fit.

Endurance art strains and exhausts the body

Artists like Marina Abramović are known for testing the limits of human endurance. Endurance art can involve carrying heavy objects or posing uncomfortably for long durations. (This resource contains some artistic depictions of violence.)

A graffiti artist breaks down the fundamentals of the form

Graffiti is more than just tagging a name. Legendary street artist Carlos Mare, also known as Mare 139, breaks down how to paint several of the form's popular styles and motifs, from quickly drawn throwies to intricately planned masterpieces.

Picasso was a major influence on Jean-Michel Basquiat

Both Picasso and Basquiat are major figures of 20th-century art, with distinctive styles that flew in the face of the formalized standards of their respective times. Below is one of Basquiat's portraits of Picasso, who influenced the younger artist’s approach to form, from 1984.

Archaeologists discovered over 11,000 examples of graffiti in ancient Pompeii

Residents drew various figures and announcements on homes, temples, and walls, much of it preserved by volcanic ash. While some were clearly intended to be artistic, scholars have noted that the ancient graffiti has more in common with social media than with the tags and murals we associate today with the art form.

Experimental duo Suicide used the word 'punk' to describe their music in 1970

The New York act was inspired by free jazz, electronic music, and performance art, playing loud, frenetic, and often abrasive music that reckoned with the horrors of the Vietnam War. On the hand-drawn poster for their first gig, they described the sound with four words: “Punk Music by Suicide.”

Picasso was one of the 20th century's most influential artists

The artist is recognized as one of the inventors of cubism, which simplified figures and scenes into flattened geometric shapes and imagined arrangements. The movement spurred new styles in response and led to increasingly abstract art. Styles like futurism, dada, De Stijl, and art deco were built on the simple forms, abstract ideas, collage, and found objects of early cubism.

The widespread violence of World War I birthed surrealism

Following World War I, artists used unconventional forms of expression to make sense of the death and destruction they'd witnessed for years. Life as they knew it had ended, and movements like Surrealism, founded by André Breton, rebelled against tradition.

Experience Maya culture through art—both ancient and modern

This gallery showcases how Maya culture endures through both ancient monuments and modern artistic expressions, tracing visual traditions from pre-Columbian carvings and murals to contemporary works created by Maya artists.

Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady were early Beats

Works like Ginsberg’s "Howl" and Kerouac’s "On the Road" redefined literature, inspiring countercultural movements for several decades.

The Beat Generation, explained

The Beat Generation challenged societal norms in the 1950s by embracing experimental writing and tackling taboo topics like drug use, spirituality, and nonconformity. Figures like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Diane di Prima sparked a cultural movement that rejected traditional literary forms and explored the hidden struggles of American life.

Is the pandemic performance art?

Interdisciplinary artist Kristina Wong sees parallels between the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and some of the “worst performance art” she’s encountered in her career. Wong’s sharp sense of humor and clever writing mean that she gets in some good digs at the more ridiculous side of performance art, but don’t let her funny fool you: this is an incisive piece on the role of performance, empathy, trauma, and art in all our lives.

Japan's wrestling style is called puroresu

Puroresu has a long history in Japan, much of it traced back to Mitsuhiro Momota, better known as Rikidozan, who was the form’s first superstar and a hero to the country in the wake of World War II.

Lady Gaga studied the Abramovic Method

The Abramović Method compiles Abramović’s own learnings and gives instructions to other artists for remaining present and grounded. Pop star Lady Gaga learned the method and cited it as a huge influence on her work.

Exploring Martha Graham's 'love of the body'

The innovative choreographer encouraged her dancers to tune into their bodies' natural movements. According to Kimerer L. LaMothe, author of "What a Body Knows," that kind of mindfulness made them better able to communicate a piece's symbolic meaning.

Picasso is known as one of the creators of cubism

In the early 1900s, cubism redefined modern art by breaking objects into geometric shapes and showing multiple perspectives at once. Developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, it challenged the idea that art should mirror reality, and laid the foundation for many movements that followed.