The title of choreographer Yvonne Rainer’s 2006 memoir, Feelings are Facts, describes the knot of perception, language, and emotion that make up an autobiography. But it’s an interesting choice for her. Rainer’s dances tended to avoid emotionally expressive movements. She’s sometimes called a minimalist, and she did her best-known work in the same 1960s downtown scene that gave rise to conceptual art, performance art, and minimal art. (Her artistic collaborator and romantic partner at the time was the minimalist sculptor Robert Morris.) Ask a thousand art historians to describe minimalism and you’ll probably never hear the word “emotion”. But it’s an art movement that captured a major shift in our understanding of subjective experience and the human body.
Share this post
The Rise of the Vibes
Share this post
The title of choreographer Yvonne Rainer’s 2006 memoir, Feelings are Facts, describes the knot of perception, language, and emotion that make up an autobiography. But it’s an interesting choice for her. Rainer’s dances tended to avoid emotionally expressive movements. She’s sometimes called a minimalist, and she did her best-known work in the same 1960s downtown scene that gave rise to conceptual art, performance art, and minimal art. (Her artistic collaborator and romantic partner at the time was the minimalist sculptor Robert Morris.) Ask a thousand art historians to describe minimalism and you’ll probably never hear the word “emotion”. But it’s an art movement that captured a major shift in our understanding of subjective experience and the human body.