Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Sayre defines for the first time the apparently diffuse avant-garde art of the past two decades in terms of its distinctly postmodern concerns. The range of arts discussed here encompasses contemporary dance, photography, oral poetics, performance art, and earthworks.

"Sayre has written one of the most intelligent, sensible, and readable accounts of the tenents of Postmodern artmaking published to date."--Jeff Abell, New Art Examiner

"No one can read The Object of Performance without gaining a far better idea than before of what has happened to art, and, in some measure, why. . . . I find this book consistently illuminating."--Arthur C. Danto

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

The avant-garde movement has raised the hackles of many critics and art lovers, though for others it has wrought a significant change in the object-viewer relationship. Sayre argues that the avant-garde movement has shifted the focus from object to audience through the element of performance and that this shift has opened new and broader relationships between the two. His analysis is intriguing and thorough; it also demonstrates, perhaps unintentionally, the muddled thinking and manipulation that surrounds many avant-garde artists and their works. A good book that says more than a first reading indicates.-- Terry Skeats, Bishop's Univ., Lennoxville, Quebec (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

Sayre offers a perspective that is strikingly different from that provided by most historians, or political and social scientists; a fresh look at US avant-garde artist-intellectuals in the role of social reformers. The collection of thought-provoking essays, interviews, and quotes furnishes a rich, multidimensional view of the psychological, social, and political ramifications of a significant question: Is there equality for women in the arts? It also illumines the special problems faced by women in the present social structure. Sayre's contention is that the central conflict in our society has always been between the aggressive, expansionist male-dominated desire to mold the world to fit our view of what it should be, and the more passive, female desire to live freely, naturally, and in harmony with the environment. Art includes dance, earthworks, oral poetry, photography, dance, and performance art, and Sayre's premise is that the antiformalist stance denies art as object and substitues art as performance--timelessness versus temporalness. Well illustrated, with scholarly endnotes and an extensive index, this tome is a gold mine of information for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. -M. Casas, San Antonio College