The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (365 page)

Performance art
.

An art form combining elements of theatre, music, and the visual arts. It is related to the
happening
(the two terms are sometimes used synonymously), but Performance art is usually more carefully programmed and generally does not involve audience participation. The tradition of Performance art can be traced back to the
Futurists
,
Dadaists
, and
Surrealists
, who often staged humorous or provocative events to promote their work or ideas, then through such activities as Georges
Mathieu
painting in front of an audience in the 1950s and Yves
Klein
directing nude models smeared with paint in the early 1960s. However, it was only in the later 1960s and particularly in the 1970s that Performance art became recognized as a category of art in itself. ‘At that time’, RoseLee Goldberg writes, ‘Conceptual art was in its heyday and performance was often a demonstration, or an execution, of [its] ideas… Art spaces devoted to performance sprang up in the major international art centres, museums sponsored festivals, art colleges introduced performance courses, and specialist magazines appeared’ (
Performance Art, From Futurism to the Present
, 1988). The form and tone of Performances have varied enormously. Some practitioners have cultivated sado-masochism and scatology (the abuse of the performer's body is something that often occurs also in
Body art
, with which Performance art sometimes overlaps). In Britain, however, the field has more often been characterized by whimsicality (in the 1970s there was a fad for Performance groups with quaint names and for wacky newsworthy stunts). Performance art has also been used as an adjunct to rock music (the American Laurie Anderson (1947– ) is the most noted exponent) and as a vehicle for political dissent, as well as for the exploration of private fantasies. Among the artists particularly associated with Performance art are Joseph
Beuys
and
Gilbert
& George.

 
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Pergamene School
.

A trend in
Hellenistic
sculpture, associated with the city of Pergamum in Asia Minor, whose great period coincided with the Attalid dynasty (241–133 BC). The works associated with the Pergamene school are characterized by an exaggeration of the general tendency of Hellenistic sculpture towards emotional display and virtuoso naturalistic detail. They include a series of Dying Gauls (the most famous is in the Capitoline Museum, Rome) that have been identified as copies of statues dedicated by Attalus I to celebrate a victory over the Gauls, and the Great Altar of Zeus (Pergamum Museum, Berlin,
c.
180–150 BC), which features relief carvings of the fight between gods and giants depicted with an extraordinary sense of movement and dramatic tension. It is perhaps the ‘Satan's seat’ of Revelation 2:13. Other Hellenistic works from places other than Pergamum (above all the celebrated
Laocoön
) are clearly similar in their restless energy and some scholars deny that there is adequate reason for supposing there is a separate Pergamene School. T. B. L. Webster in his
Hellenistic Poetry and Art
(1964), however, maintains that although the artists employed by the Attalid kings came from various places, they ‘achieved a unity of style which justifies the name Pergamene’.

 
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(1500/1–47).
Florentine painter. He took his name (del Vaga) from a minor painter with whom he worked after studying with Ridolfo
Ghirlandaio
. In about 1518 he moved to Rome, where he became one of
Raphael's
assistants working on the Vatican Loggie. After the Sack of Rome in 1527 he moved to Genoa, where he was based until the late 1530s and where his
Mannerist
style had great influence. His major work there was a series of mythological frescos in the Palazzo Doria. By 1539 he was back in Rome, where he became the principal decorative artist employed by Pope Paul III (Alessandro
Farnese
), his work for him including frescos on the history of Alexander the Great (1545–7) in the Sala del Consiglio of the Castel S. Angelo. Perino's style derives from Raphael and
Giulio
Romano, but is ornamental rather than monumental. He was one of the leading decorative artists of his generation, and his work has been aptly described by S. J. Freedberg (
Painting in Italy
: 1500–1600, 1971) as ‘intellignet but facile’. He also did a number of devotional pictures in a Raphaelesque vein, notably the unfinished
Holy Family
(Courtauld Inst., London).

 
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(1886–1952).
Belgian painter and sculptor, one of the leading exponents of
Expressionism
in Belgium in the period between the two World Wars. He was badly wounded in the First World War in 1914 and was evacuated to England. In 1919 he returned to Belgium, where he lived in Antwerp and Ostend before building his own house and studio at Jabbeke, near Bruges, now a Permeke museum (he called his home De Vier Windstreken, ‘The Four Corners of the Earth’). His subjects were taken mainly from the life of the coastal towns of Belgium and he is best known for his strong and solemn portrayals of sailors and fishermen with their women (
The Fiancés
, Musées Royaux, Brussels, 1923). From 1935 he also made sculpture.

 
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(1651–1732).
German sculptor. He was in Italy 1675–89 and his lively
Baroque
style was much influenced by
Bernini
. In 1689 he became court sculptor at Dresden and spent most of the rest of his life there. His most important work was the sculptural decoration of the Zwinger—Augustus the Strong's pleasure palace in Dresden, designed by the architect M. D. Pöppelmann (begun 1711, badly damaged in the Second World War). Permoser carved in wood and ivory as well as stone and also made ingenious use of coloured marble (
Damned Soul
, Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig,
c.
1715).
Roubiliac
is said to have studied with him.