Performance Art and Capturing Reality

On page 48 of Michael Rush’s New Media in Late 20^th Century Art, Rush says “The view that even ordinary movements could be considered art owed something to choreographer Meredith Monk.”  After watching numerous Hitchcock films for one of my film classes, I’ve started to wonder when cinema decided to attempt to mimic normal human behavior and cast away the exaggerated acting style that can be found in many of the films from the 40’s and 50’s.  After reading this line I started to wonder if this shift in filmmaking technique was due to the influence of performance art. 

When I began to research performance art, I found that it is considered “the antithesis to theater.”  Because early film was heavily influenced by theater, where body movements and speech have to be exaggerated in order to successfully communicate to a large live audience, it seems that performance art played a large part in showing that video art does not have to be bound by the rules of the stage.  I have posted an example of performance art that was contained within the Academy Award winning film American Beauty.  This clip not only shows the influence that performance art had on cinema, but I believe it also embodies the quote by Rush that even ordinary movements can be considered art.