Performance Art Today

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(Performance) Art Today Pavlina Kotaleska Ss. Cyril and Methodius University-Skopje Academic Writing 15.05.2013 The perception of art nowadays is different than before. Namely, today art has lost its previous charm, and it seems more and more to be an equivalent of the odd and the unusual. This revelation occurred to me after seeing several performance art shows, and I will elaborate this by providing several definitions of art and performance art followed by examples of performance art shows as well as expert’s views on the subject.

Even though some may consider the sole attempt to define art mere nonsense, I believe it is necessary for the purpose of this essay. Most of the definitions link art with aesthetics and it seems justifiable. At the end of the day, this is the most important task of art, to provoke pleasant feelings which one will want to feel again and again. This is exactly what Beardsley (1982) says: ‘[art is] either an arrangement of conditions intended to be capable of affording an experience with marked aesthetic character or (incidentally) an arrangement belonging to a class or type of arrangements that is typically intended to have this capacity’ (as cited in Thomas, 2005, Functional (mainly aesthetic) definitions section, para.3). Moreover, in the definition provided by Zangwill (1995) art is supposed to provoke aesthetic feelings out of non-aesthetic ones (op.cit. para.3). That is even if an ugly object is presented to the audience it should be for the purpose of provoking fulfilling feelings.
However, not all definitions of art put aesthetics in focus. Some even discard it and consider aesthetic definitions mere absurdity. Tolstoy, for example is strongly opposing these

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