Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art and the 1970s - Review

Art in America, March, 1999 by Stephanie Cash

Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art and the 1970s, by Kathy O'Dell, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1998; 128 pages, $47.95 (hardcover), $18.95 (paperback).

When a performance artist slices into his own flesh, has himself shot in the arm or hammers his penis to a 2-by-4, what message are viewers supposed to get? Chances are the audience walks away with vivid images of those few shocking moments in which blood was drawn; the rest is just a blur or, like the superfluous narrative in a porn movie, an annoying prelude to the real action. What such performances are about is not much discussed. The medium is the message.

The '70s saw a rise in blatantly masochistic performance art, which was perhaps an extreme outgrowth of '60s body art. The '90s have again seen an increase in the number of self-violating performers. What does this reflect: a similar psychosocio-political landscape in the two eras, or simply the natural cycle of trends in the art world? In either case, the publication of Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance and the 1970s, by Kathy O'Dell, couldn't be more timely.

O'Dell, an assistant professor of art history and theory at the University of Maryland, focuses on five artists from the '70s who were pioneers of masochistic performance: Chris Burden, Gina Pane, Vito Acconci, and the team of Marina Abramovic and Ulay. O'Dell notes that though their performances varied widely, these artists addressed common issues, namely "the mechanics of alienation in art and everyday life; the psychological influences of the domestic site on art and everyday life; the sensation of being both a human subject and an object; the function of metaphor in art; and, especially, the relationship between artist and audience." Though feminist and political art flourished in the '70s, most performances from that period weren't overtly political, but used metaphoric gestures to suggest a more general societal dysfunction. Political protest and publicly staged self-abuse, in O'Dell's view, share an underlying psychological dynamic.

While O'Dell contextualizes particular masochistic performances in their Vietnam-era political milieu, she seeks to understand them through the notion of contracts--psychological, social or legal--evoked in the book's title. Equally central to her thesis are the developmental theories set forth by such pyschoanalysts as Freud, Lacan and Didier Anzieu. Masochistic performance artists, she maintains, were pointing out trouble in the social institutions of the law and the home, both of which are founded upon the principle of contract, or "the everyday agreements ... that we all make with others but that may not be in our own best interests." In short, O'Dell transposes the classic idea of the social contract into the avant-garde realm of performance.

In order to make that link, O'Dell must grapple with the definition and usage of the term "masochism." She cites the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), which defines masochism as "the act (real, not simulated) of being humiliated, beaten, bound, or otherwise made to suffer" for the purpose of sexual gratification. (Usually a cooperative and active sadist is involved who understands the limits and rules of S/M "play," i.e., accepts an implicit contract.) But popular usage has grown to include any sort of willful self-abuse, be it physical or mental, and doesn't necessarily imply sexual arousal. It is in this broader sense that the term has generally come to describe a distinct vein of performance art.

In one of her many tangents, O'Dell traces the origin and evolution of the word "masochism" and examines historical studies of the clinical disorder. The term was coined by 19th-century psychoanalyst Richard von Krafft-Ebing in response to the works of novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who, under signed contracts with various women, commissioned painful sexual interactions. Among numerous subsequent studies of the topic were those undertaken by Freud, Theodor Reik and French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Combining their findings with theories of pyschic development outlined by Freud, Lacan and Anzieu, O'Dell concentrates on the oral, mirror and oedipal stages, assigning particular kinds of art performances to each. Simply stated, the oral stage is represented by works that entail the mouth and skin; mirror-stage performances use mirrors to address identity; and a bed--or a prone position--is the key element of oedipal-stage performances.

For example, according to Anzieu's theory of the "mothering environment," skin, as a container, protector and means of communication, is metaphorically crucial to psychic development. So while the mother's skin is important early in the oral stage, in which the child has a fantasy of a "common skin," by the end of this phase the child has internalized the skin's functions and is able to successfully separate from the mother. Any disturbance in this developmental process, such as either tactile overstimulation or deprivation of physical contact, can result in the child's desire to return to the uterus. O'Dell asserts that performance artists who focus on the mouth are demonstrating the inherent struggle in this symbolic separation from the mother. Examples of oral-stage performances are Vito Acconci's 1970 Trademarks (performed without an audience, but publicized through photos in the fall 1972 issue of Avalanche) in which the artist bit himself all over his naked body and then made ink prints from the indentations; Chris Burden's Velvet Water (performed in 1974 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago), which consisted of Burden's attempting to breathe water from a basin, repeatedly dunking his head and coming up for air until he collapsed after five minutes; and Gina Pane's Discours mou et mat (performed at Amsterdam's de Appel in 1975), which culminated in the artist smashing, with bare fists, mirrors on which she had drawn a mouth and the word "alienation"--then slicing her lip with a razor blade.