Book launch The Rebirth of Wonder (PUR, 2025) by Clélia Barbut “Art corporel,” “art de l’action,” “body art,” “happening,” “performance” … During the 1970s, the proliferation of these terms signaled the blossoming of a field of practices that used the artist’s body as their primary medium. This book focuses on the emergence of these practices in France, New York, and Los Angeles. It draws on a wide range of documentary sources produced between 1965 and 1985 and examines a little over forty works. At a time when performance appears self-evident, the book analyzes the context in which performance evolved from a marginal movement into an institutionalized artistic genre.

At the crossroads of the history of artistic practice and art criticism, the history of activism, and intellectual history, the study demonstrates that, beneath the appearance of radical and spontaneous rupture, the emergence of performance was in fact a transversal event. Performative artistic practices produced an iconography, aesthetic strategies, a political repertoire, and a reservoir of ideas. By historicizing the wonder sparked by their appearance, the investigation restores their complexity and sheds light on the role they continue to play today in renewing our categories of action and thought.

This book launch will be accompanied by a discussion with Clélia Barbut, moderated by Émilie Renard, Elena Lespes Munoz, and Vincent Enjalbert.

The Rebirth of Wonder – Arts de la performance pendant la décennie 1970 en France et en Amérique du Nord , 2025
Clélia Barbut
Presses Universitaires de Rennes
Collection: Arts contemporains
260 pages
€24