Journal of Art Historiography (Dec 2019)
On Dennis Oppenheim’s marionette theatre
Abstract
Between 1974 and 1978 the American artist Dennis Oppenheim staged a series of dramatically lit and oftentimes disturbing tableaux featuring motorized, less-than-life-size marionettes that jerkily moved to a pre-recorded soundtrack of the artist’s voice or music recorded by the artist. Described by Oppenheim as surrogates for himself these marionettes often engaged in acts that would be impossible for actual human bodies to perform. Producing effects of bodily immanence that often engendered affective responses in viewers through overtly mechanical means, these works addressed the challenges of exhibiting performance-based works in conventional gallery settings. This essay considers the ways in which Oppenheim’s surrogate pieces explored the anxieties and antimonies of liberal humanism at the end of the 1960s in which a political allegiance to liberatory and pluralistic politics entailed – at least for a large part of the liberal population – a necessary reduction if not negation of one’s own social position.
