A notion that often floats around is that art is creative freedom, with its chaos nevertheless chained within a set of constraints. The gallery experience is governed by guards and glass cabinets, the ropes and the rules that we must not touch and must speak in muted tones, where taking a sneaky bite from a sandwich whilst the warden has his back turned is strictly forbidden. The floor plan fixes our footsteps in line with a layout and route to follow round until our experience almost feels as framed as the paintings, thus perpetuating the power and pedagogic aim of the artistic institution. However, this glass cabinet is shattered into shards of insignificance by a fearsome blow, a forceful attack in favour of artistic freedom, when the power of the paintbrush is placed in the palm of the art viewer rather than that of the artist.

Generally, the spectator is side-lined to the shadows, making no difference whatsoever to the meaning of the masterpiece. Whether they be analytically picking apart the fibres of artistic intention, picking fluff from their jumper or staring absently at a blank wall, the work will still remain the same. However, there is a branch of contemporary art where the work actually depends on audience presence and participation, where its essence shivers and shakes at the spectator’s touch. The way in which the meaning of a work here changes may be because of the position of the person in relation to the artwork, because of their appearance or because of their audacity to act. More often than not it is their motivity: that is to say, the way in which they choose to manipulate the work, or simply, the way the properties of their own perception interact with it. 

This interaction between artwork, artist and art viewer is often intimate but can be invasive. Yoko Ono is a Japanese artist most known for her performance Cut Piece (1964-1966), where the audience were asked to cut away her clothing whilst she sat still and expressionless on stage. As the artist positions herself passive in the hands of the audience, the control is thus balanced on the blade of the scissors that literally slice through the boundary between self and stranger. The result of the piece differed with each performance, echoing the ephemeral essence of her other works such as Painting to Be Stepped On (1960), a scrap of canvas fixed to the floor instead of perfect alignment on a gallery wall, that only became a completed artwork upon the accrual of footprints.

Marina Abramovic took this concept even further in Rhythm O, a six-hour work of performance art where objects were offered to the audience to use on her body as they so desired. The seventy two objects placed on a table included perfume and a pair of scissors, a feather and fine wine, sweet honey and a scalpel, bread and a blood-red rose, grapes and a gun loaded with a single bullet. There were also nails and a metal bar, suggesting an atmosphere of aggression before the show had even started.

The gentleness of giving her a rose or a kiss, of turning the artist around or thrusting her arms into the air, soon descended into something more sinister. After three hours all her clothes had been cut away with razor blades and rose thorns stuck in her stomach, by the fourth hour these blades had begun to explore beneath her skin, and during the two hours of torture that still remained her throat was slashed so someone could suck her blood.

The purpose of the piece was to find out just how far the public would go, and what is shocking is that the perpetrators were just ordinary people. It is said that she was willing to take responsibility for her murder, and so we can only imagine the tension that must have descended like a dark cloud when the loaded gun was pointed to her forehead and a finger coiled around its trigger. The end of the experiment was announced at 2am at which point the artist began to move again. Unable to face her as a person rather than a puppet, the audience ran away.

There is something very seductive in the promise of power, not only in glimpsing beyond the glass cabinet, but in being able to touch it and test its limits. In exploring these boundaries we begin to escape from expectation. There is, however, evidently a danger if we are allowed to escape too far.