Kathy O'Dell

rdf:langString Kathy O'Dell

rdf:langString Kathy Rosalyn O'Dell

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rdf:langString M.A., University of California, Berkeley

rdf:langString B.A., Colby College

rdf:langString Ph.D., Graduate Center of the City University of New York

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rdf:langString Art theory: violent practices in performance art

rdf:langString In her astute analysis, O'Dell untangles the social, psychological and legal implications of such infamous creative acts as Chris Burden shooting himself, Vito Acconci biting his arm and filling the teeth marks with ink, Gina Pane slitting her lip with a razor blade and Ulay sewing his mouth shut while Marina Abramović attempted to articulate his thoughts. O'Dell argues that we need to move beyond the fact of pain and examine the ways in which these artists' masochistic strategies push the limits of an implicit contract between the performer and audience. O'Dell draws on an impressive range of sources to develop her theory of how masochism operates in these artists' work—and indeed it is her ability to draw connections between the psychological and legal aspects of the contract that enables us to make a conceptual leap beyond the fact of pain.

rdf:langString ...an idea of masochism derived from the philosopher Gilles Deleuze's encounter with the Marquis de Sade in Coldness and Cruelty, with its emphasis on the "masochistic contract." Writing about Chris Burden's Shoot, for instance, she says: "Each of the individuals involved, therefore, agreed to tacit or specified terms of a "contract" with the artist. . . . [T]he crucial implication of such masochistic performances concerns the everyday agreements—or contracts—that we all make with others but that may not be in our own best interests." The effect of this, for O'Dell, is to reveal the alienation bound up with such everyday agreements. Generally, the "masochistic" artists of the seventies, "wanted to reactivate a meeting of the minds, specifically in the form of a negotiation of differences between individuals or negotiation among the various identities inherent in one's own being."

rdf:langString Kathy O'Dell, Arts Advocate

rdf:langString Kathy Rosalyn O'Dell (born 1950) is an art historian, theorist, curator, arts advocate, author, and special assistant to the Dean for Arts Partnerships at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. She is known for art theories, especially for contextualizing violence in performance art within social contracts and psychoanalytic theories.

rdf:langString Kathy Rosalyn O'Dell