Mixing Art and Life: The Conundrum of the Avant-Garde's Autonomous Status in the Performance Art World of Los Angeles

Abstract

Performance art, the quintessential avant-garde art form, flourished and gained national renown in Los Angeles during the last three decades of the twentieth century. In 1989, however, pivotal changes occurred within the performance art world and in the national attitude toward art, as seen in upheavals in the National Endowment for the Arts, that drastically altered not only the form and content of performance art but also its means of production and its status as an autonomous avantgarde art world. An historical analysis of the transformation of this performance art world from the mid-1970s to its manifestation in the 1990s is presented by analyzing ethnographic and archival data and by noting the circumstances affecting the autonomy of this art world and its relationship to external social and cultural spheres.