Eschewing traditional notions of media and permanence, performance art takes the artist’s body as its medium and their actions as its content. Performed live, often in front of an audience, modern performance art has roots in the Dada movement of the 1910s. Artists like Tristan Tzara, Hugo Ball, and Emmy Hennings experimented with new forms of spoken word and dance at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. The form blossomed in the mid-century with artists such as Carolee Schneemann, Joseph Beuys, Yoko Ono, and Yayoi Kusama using the medium of performance to send political messages and to expand the definition of fine art. Many of these artists explored the role of the body in art, often positioning the female body as an active subject, beyond the role of the passive object of male desire. Performance art is also related to Conceptual Art, which also found its mature form in the 1960s, in that both media have as their starting point a set of rules or directions. Chance, then, plays a large role in the final product of a performance.

Iconic pieces of performance art from the past are known through documentation of the original performances, in the form of film, photographs, and written accounts. Pieces are sometimes re-performed by the original artist or by new performers. For the 2010 Museum of Modern Art retrospective of celebrated performance artist Marina Abramović, a cast of young artists re-performed works from throughout her long career. During that exhibition, Abramović tested her own endurance with a new piece titled The Artist is Present, in which she sat, stationary, as visitors took turns occupying the seat opposite her. The piece lasted for 700 hours over the course of several months. Performance art remains a vital art form today, with contemporary artists like Tino Sehgal and Gilbert & George creating new boundary-pushing pieces.