Action art: a midway path between a constructed asistematicity and political incorrection

Abstract

Action art had its origins in the exercises of historical vanguards, denying art’s autonomous status. On the other hand, theory and criticism insisted on addressing their trajectory as unsystematic; evaluating actions that took place after the Second World War as the germ of the genre. According to this analysis, its character of emergency in the sixties, would be related to social and political events of the Cold War and, therefore, respond to a framework of activism, repression, police intervention, political reforms, rather than to an aesthetic field. This text considers the genre historic bibliography and points out through various movements the display of performances, happenings, and interventions, to emphasize that, the allusion to a supposed asistematicity responds to a theoretical construction that, among other aspects, favored the radical turn towards mercantile paths of the, so-called, Second Vanguards.