Art can be derived from many different mediums which are expressive in the artist's own manner. Performance art has taken its toll lying on the spectrum of moving messages to confusing pieces. Performance artists such as Marina Abramovic and Mona Hatoum are examples of having controversial, yet moving pieces that audiences debate on whether its art or not. The impact of these performance artists left audiences in awe, with their pieces reflecting on issues such as bulimia, war, and rape. On the other hand, some may say that creativity is at stake as people believe these artists are merely using their avant-garde ideas as a way for people to call them "artists".
In the article, "A Stranger in the Gallery: Conceptions of the Body Through Art and Theory" by Sarah. W Abu Bakr, the author expresses the minds behind performance art and how it is needed in society to place a better message for social and ethical issues happening within the past and present.
In contrast, the article "Creativity in Crisis" by Lynn Helding, talks about how performance art puts people at risk of their own creativity and shuts their mind out to try and be "unique and original".
Critics and artists know there is a fine line between being too over the top and being a genius. An artist who gets stabbed by multiple random people to show the cruelty of society and an artist who made a ten-minute video about the relationship with her mother to portray war and poverty shows the validity of what is and isn't art. Helding would claim that creativity is defined as "the ability to produce work that is both novel (i.e., original, unexpected) and appropriate (i.e., useful, adaptive concerning task constraints) (597)". On the other hand, Abu Bakr claims that if strong enough, performance art could challenge "who has historically been object to be viewed, and who is the viewer " (page 2, paragraph 4). Both articles could come to a common ground of challenging creativity by not focusing on the avant-garde style of artistry, but rather the backstory and own artist's creativity to help associate on how performance art is not a creative piece in crisis, but rather a piece that keeps evolving.
Both sources share a common ground when it comes to the artist's intuition for their work rather than the style and physical portrayal of their work. In Abu Bakr's article, she talks about a specific performance artist named Sarah Baartman, who was known for her role as the "Hottentot Venus" for her large buttocks and "freak-like" nature. Baartman displayed her deceased body for audiences to view as a work of art.
Abu Bakr states "the classical body is transcendent, monumental, closed, static, self-contained, symmetrical and sleek; it is identified with the 'high' or official culture of the Renaissance, and later with rationalism, individualism, and normalizing aspirations of the bourgeoisie. The grotesque body is open, protruding, irregular, secreting, multiple, and changing. It is identified with non-official 'low' culture, or the carnivalesque, and with social transformation" (page 1, 3).
The use of the corpse in galleries helps emphasize the beauty of a "grotesque body." The backstory behind Baartman is that she was paraded around freak shows to exhibit her large buttocks to many audiences. As Abu Bakr claims that the display was grotesque and hard to look at, the meaning behind the piece was moving as it shines a light on "negative concepts" of the body and shows God's natural beauty.
Helding can find common ground with this piece as she claims in her article that "returning to cognition, creativity's two distinct cognitive pathways are, in order, divergent thinking and convergent thinking, or what psychologist Mark Runco termed "problem-finding" and "problem–solving."(599).
Helding continues, explaining how creativity can be found by finding a problem and accompanying it with a solution, which could be an example of Baartman's corpse display. Furthermore, the problem was that, in context, Baartman was only a freak of nature with a strange body structure and an emphasized buttocks, so performance artist's wanted to change that and display her as a work of art rather than a freak of nature. This emphasizes acceptance of the body no matter its shape or size. Helding can come to a common ground with this art piece, as it has an avant-garde (over the top, excessive, controversial and experimental art) style to it, but it displays an artistic problem and solution that Helding would come to recognize as divergent thinking.
Although both sources may share common grounds through analysis of artwork and picking apart its details, they do both produce valid points.
In Helding's article, she claims "This is the much balley-hooed 'thinking outside the box,' a concept that has been co-opted by advertising firms to highlight products positioned on the vanguard of style, the implication being that those still stuck inside "the box" are pathetically out of fashion." (599).
Helding expresses how many artists force themselves to go "out of the box," but try too hard to achieve a unique style which results in the artist failing to execute a knowledgeable piece. It only passes as an unusual work of confusing art. She later states how being out of fashion should not be a demeanor to someone's creativity as the passion for ideas and divergent thinking should help the artist find complex solutions without having to go beyond the line and beat other artists for a more original piece.
Such as the performance artist Marina Abromovich, who once staged a performance titled "Rhythm 0," which challenged the audience to be the independent variable to the performer who was the dependent variable. The significance of this was to show how cruel the public can be when being free to do whatever they wanted to someone. She allowed people to do whatever they wanted, which resulted in her being physically hurt multiple times to challenge society's freedom. Helding would argue that this act could be too bizarre and life-threatening to pass around as a creative piece because of its harmful results and the possibility of confronting the problem with society in a different manner.
In contrast, Abu Bakr has her own disagreeable and valid points. She states that "This "proper" art used to be referred to with terms such as high art or fine art. With the postmodern paradigm shift, such words were left behind, but a singular idea of worthy art (of sponsoring and displaying in galleries) remains intact" (page 3, paragraph 1). This quote portrays her views on how producing over the top art can have its perks, as people try to move outside the box to claim themselves to an audience for their standout performances. The difference to Helding is that Abu Bakr expresses how the ugliest thing can be made beautiful if the right mindset is given towards the people viewing the art. Galleries showcasing art of all different element and nature only add towards the intuition of creativity, such as Marina Abramovic's "Rhythm" pieces.
Both sources can come to a common ground with the divergent thinking of Helding's theories, and the excessive and expressive art that Abu Bakr explains can form a reconciliation on how theories behind the art and the unique sense it holds can make it stand out as creative and as a work of art.
