When French avant-garde artist Orlan elected to surgically alter her face during a series of performances in the 1990s, she provoked extreme reactions both within art criticism and the popular press. Rather than focus on the artist's mental health or intentions, I hope to connect her corpus of performances since the 1960s to taboos imposed upon the body. By blurring the boundaries between sexualized and sacred bodies and evoking the horror of death through self-mutilation, Orlan defiantly breaks these taboos. My thesis relates Orlan's deconstruction of religious, art-historical, and social constructs to Georges Bataille's writings on taboo and transgression. My connection between his vast body of literature and Orlan's performances centers on his formulations of eroticism and sacrifice, and his description of transgression as the blurring of binary forces. I argue that Bataille's writings that describe transgression as a gateway to inner experience resonate with Orlan's outrageous performances. / A Thesis Submitted to the Department of Art History in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Masters of Art. / Fall Semester, 2007. / October 22, 2007. / Performance Art, Transgression, Taboo, Georges Bataille, Orlan, Contemporary Art / Includes bibliographical references. / Adam Jolles, Professor Directing Thesis; Roald Nasgaard, Committee Member; Tatiana Flores, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_176120 |
| Contributors | Tessin, Stephanie (authoraut), Jolles, Adam (professor directing thesis), Nasgaard, Roald (committee member), Flores, Tatiana (committee member), Department of Art History (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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