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

Art in America, March, 1999 by Stephanie Cash

O'Dell sometimes seems to lose sight of her audience. Contract with the Skin reads like a graduate-seminar paper in its forced marriage of art work to theory (it began, in fact, as her dissertation). Unfortunately, the visceral and emotional response invoked by watching violent acts is dulled by the book's theoretical density.

Since masochistic performance art has been relatively little studied, it is unfortunate that this new resource is so limited in scope. Yet O'Dell is to be commended for bringing this controversial performance genre into academic discussions (and for adding to the paltry information available in the U.S. about Gina Pane). While her research is quite thorough (of the book's 128 pages, 25 are notes and 11 are bibliography), a broad and multifaceted look at this type of performance would be more useful than a narrowly defined investigation of a handful of artists.