Jonathan De Cecchi perf 1

Comment

Comment by vizma bruns on October 11, 2012 at 2:01am

I've jotted down all the details you have given me and I'll be looking into these Marina works! Thankyou so much for the info, Walter!! Great stuff!

Ha! Chanel? Hope you got a grant for that lipstick! "In the vault" sounds intriguing!! Maybe you'll have to send me a picture sometime!? Thanks again!

Comment by Walter Rovere on October 10, 2012 at 4:06pm

Unfortunately performance art most famous days were poorly documented at the time (often all there is left is a few pictures:  a rare exception is Marina's imponderabilia - done here in bologna in 1977, the one where she and Ulay stood naked in the entrance of the modern art gallery and people had to rub themselves over their bodies in order to enter to see the rest of the exhibition - they were stopped by the police after 20 minutes, but there are two videos of it - one in color, you can only see the b/w on youtube); That's why it's so great Marina did the Seven Easy Pieces remakes at Moma (I curated the italian premiere of this film, but unfortunately she could not attend!), you can find it on dvd (amazon etc) if you haven't seen it and it's fantastic (boredom and all: on YT you can find the 30 mins presentation she did of this film in Bologna (when it was screened again two years later by the Art university), and she was saying that sometimes also boredom is part of a performance..

.. anyway check S.E.P. if you didn't already cause it's so much better than The Artist is Present..

as for the lipsticked paper (Chanel lipstick - it cost a fortune!) I brought it back from Paris, but never thought of photographing it, it's still in the vault.. ( I got all the (analogic) performance pictures but I don't think I can post here full frontal nudes! we'll see..)

Comment by vizma bruns on October 10, 2012 at 10:24am

I was never very interested in performance art, probably because I'd only seen really bad ones, but when I found out about Marina Abramovic I was hooked. Thanks for the explanation, Walter.

And what happened to the lipsticked paper from 10 yrs ago? Did you get to keep it? Do you have a photo?

Comment by Walter Rovere on October 9, 2012 at 11:27pm

oh yes, this would be a nice idea, but unfortunately I did not create that performance!

(though ten years ago in Paris I presented a performance that was a remake of a re/modelling of Yves Klein's body paintings, in which a naked guy was being painted over with lipstick, and then printed himself on a sheet of paper!)

- this performance instead, by Jonathan de Cecchi, went like this: the color photocopied photographs (of weapons and war scenes) were initially laid down on the bedsheet, covering the painted names of italian factories producing weapons; then they were attached (very violently!) one by one, with double sided tape, to the guy's body, by the artist in military uniform. Lastly, when he attached a photo over the guy's eyes, the guy fell down, and Jonathan, undressed of the uniform, then proceeded to cover his body with acrilic color poured from the jug you see in picture.

Comment by vizma bruns on October 9, 2012 at 12:38pm

Great stuff Walter! Will you be sending those sticky photos as mail art?