On June 6, 1963, after living in Paris for several months, Argentine artist Marta Minujín performed her first happening, The Destruction, at the Impasse Ronsin, the now legendary abode of many modern and neo-avant-garde artists. This article examines how The Destruction responded to the mediatization of Nouveau Réalisme’s performances, especially Niki de Saint Phalle’s Tirs, by entering a Duchampian discourse through its destabilization of authorship, originality, and authenticity—concepts central to Modernism and the anchoring of art’s market value. In addition, The Destruction used Brechtian strategies and routinized actions to undercut the ritualism, immediacy, and collaboration fundamental to the emancipatory promise of both French and US happenings as developed by Jean-Jacques Lebel and Allan Kaprow, respectively. In its self-conscious consideration of the intertwinement between performative art forms and spectacle culture, Minujín’s first happening thus opened a path of inquiry that later Argentine avant-garde artists of the sixties would continue to explore.
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NEW: ARTMargins Print 13:1
ARTMargins Print is pleased to announce the publication of the Volume 13, Issue 1: Socialism in Contemporary African Art
- Socialism in Contemporary African Art: Butchering the End of Time
- “We Need a Lighthouse Philosopher”: Filipa César and Louis Henderson’s Sunstone (2018) and the Portuguese Genealogy of Lens-Based Media
- Make Me a Picture of the Future: Massinissa Selmani’s 1000 Socialist Villages (2015)
- The Mythography of Socialism in Contemporary Angolan Art
- The Politics and Aesthetics of Liberation: Revolution and Its Aftermath in Contemporary Artistic Practice from and about Lusophone Africa 1
- Abstract States: Modernism in Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey
- As the Nile Flows or the Camel Walks
- Introduction to “Cultural Offensive of the Working Classes”
- Cultural Offensive of the Working Classes
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