Volume 1 Fields of action opens with a foreword by Richard Koshalek about the exhibition Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979, organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) in 1998, which this publication is based.
In his introductory essay "Leap into the Void: the performance and the object" Paul Schimmel tells us about the origins of performance in the post-war period in the United States, Europe and Japan and the importance of existentialism as a philosophical movement that invites the awareness of the necessity of the act. Schimmel takes as starting points abstract expressionism and focuses especially on Jackson Pollock, the legacy of John Cage, Shozo Shimamoto, the Gutai group, the Italian-Argentine artist Lucio Fontana, the new European realism and happenings of Allan Kaprow. The curator continues with a historical review of move...read more