The performance and body art market: collecting the ephemeral

01What you collect when you collect performance

The first question the performance collector asks is fundamental: what does one actually own? The answer has evolved over the decades and today breaks down into several categories. Photographic documents constitute the most accessible category. Photographs of historic performances — Yves Klein's Anthropometries, Hermann Nitsch's Viennese actions, Gina Pane's performances documented by Francoise Masson — have become collectible pieces in their own right, with numbered and signed prints whose prices reach significant levels at auction.

Video documents form a second category. Recordings of performances by Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci or Joan Jonas are distributed in limited editions, with certificates of authenticity and exhibition conditions defined by the artist or their estate. The video of Marina Abramovic's performance The Artist is Present at MoMA in 2010 exists in editions that have entered institutional and private collections.

Relics and residual objects constitute a third category, perhaps the most fascinating for the collector seeking a physical link to the event. The sponges soaked in IKB blue used by Yves Klein, garments worn during performances, set elements or materials used during the action are all objects that provide material testimony to the performative event. Joseph Beuys systematised this approach by transforming the materials from his actions — felt, fat, copper — into autonomous sculptures that carry the memory of the performance while existing as works in their own right.

Scores and protocols form a fourth category. Some artists conceive their performances as reproducible works, accompanied by written instructions that allow reactivation by other performers. George Brecht's Event Scores, Yoko Ono's Instructions and Tino Sehgal's protocols are conceptual works whose material form is a textual document. Sehgal, radically, refuses all material documentation of his works, which are transmitted orally and acquired by verbal contract before a notary — a model that pushes the logic of the immaterial to its extreme point.

02A progressively structuring market

The performance market has structured itself around a handful of pioneering galleries that invented suitable sales methods for these forms. Galerie Lelong in Paris and New York has represented leading performance artists, including Ana Mendieta and Cildo Meireles, offering photographs, videos and objects related to their performances. Sean Kelly Gallery in New York represents Marina Abramovic and has developed expertise in marketing the various categories of objects linked to her performative work. Galerie Perrotin has hosted performances by Marina Abramovic in its spaces, demonstrating that leading galleries now integrate performance into their regular programming.

In France, Galerie Loevenbruck has championed artists whose practice includes performance, finding forms of materialisation that respect the original intention of the artist. Galerie Michel Rein in Paris and Brussels has represented artists whose work sits at the boundary between performance, installation and video, contributing to the blurring of market categories in favour of artistic coherence. Galerie GP et N Vallois in Paris has also supported performative practices by placing them within a broader programme that contextualises these forms in recent art history.

Auction houses have also integrated performance into their catalogues. Christie's and Sotheby's regularly present photographs and videos of performances in their contemporary art sales. Phillips has devoted specific lots to performance documents, acknowledging the existence of a secondary market for these objects. The Performa Biennial in New York, founded by RoseLee Goldberg, has contributed to the institutional visibility of performance and the creation of an informed collector audience.

03The dealer as mediator of the immaterial

The dealer's role in the performance market goes beyond the simple sale of objects. The dealer is a mediator who must explain to the collector what they are acquiring, what the relationship is between the material object and the performative event, and what the artistic and historical value of that relationship is. This mediation requires a deep knowledge of the history of performance and body art, the position of each artist within that history, and the conventions governing the documentation and transmission of performative works.

The dealer must also be able to manage specific legal and contractual aspects. Selling a performance video, for example, involves questions of screening rights, exhibition conditions, conservation and reproduction that do not arise for a painting or sculpture. The sales contract must specify what the collector is entitled to do with the work: may they lend it? Screen it publicly? Reproduce it in a catalogue? These questions must be anticipated and settled contractually to avoid disputes. The dealer who masters these technical aspects inspires confidence in a collector who hesitates to acquire a work whose materiality and usage rights seem unclear.

04Showing performance in the gallery

Programming performance in a gallery space raises specific curatorial and logistical questions. Live performance, when possible, creates an event that draws visitors and generates media attention that a conventional exhibition does not. The dealer must, however, anticipate practical constraints: the capacity of the space, safety for both the public and the artist, insurance, visitor-flow management and documentation of the event for absent collectors.

Exhibiting performance documents — photographs, videos, objects, scores — requires scenography that reconstructs the context of the action without betraying it. The dealer must find the balance between the documentary dimension, which informs the visitor about the original event, and the aesthetic dimension, which gives the exhibited object an autonomous presence. This balance is delicate: too much contextualisation turns the gallery into a history museum; too little leaves the visitor facing objects whose significance they do not grasp. Accompanying texts, detailed labels and complementary video supports are mediation tools that help the visitor enter the work without reducing it to a historical illustration.

05Body art and its particular challenges

Body art, which uses the artist's body as material and support, raises specific ethical and market challenges. The historic performances of Chris Burden (who had himself shot in Shoot, 1971), Gina Pane (who wounded herself with razor blades in her Actions) or Stelarc (who suspended himself from hooks piercing the skin) raise questions about the representation of bodily violence and the limits of art. The dealer presenting documents related to these performances must be prepared to contextualise the works with sensitivity and intellectual rigour, without either glamorising or trivialising them.

The contemporary body art market has moved away from the most radical forms of self-harm to explore other relationships with the body. Artists such as Cassils, who works on the physical transformation of the body through intense athletic training, or Natacha Lesueur, who uses the body as a surface for photographic composition, propose approaches that remain physically engaged without resorting to injury. The dealer can champion these contemporary practices by situating them within the historical lineage of body art while highlighting their evolution and singularity.

06A segment for informed collectors

The performance and body art market is not a mass market. It attracts informed collectors, often close to the institutional world, who collect with a heritage ambition and a nuanced understanding of recent art history. These collectors are willing to acquire works of reduced materiality — a video, a photograph, a protocol — because they understand that the value of these works lies in their historical and conceptual reach rather than in their physical presence.

For the dealer, this segment requires an investment in expertise and mediation that is proportionally greater than for a more conventional segment. But it offers in return a loyalty of clientele and a programmatic credibility that purely decorative segments do not provide. Integrating performance into a gallery programme sends a signal of intellectual seriousness that benefits the entire practice and attracts collectors whose loyalty rests on intellectual trust as much as on aesthetic pleasure.

For galleries partnering with Artedusa, presenting works related to performance and body art offers the opportunity to reach an international audience of collectors attuned to art history and to the most demanding forms of contemporary creation, while benefiting from a digital presentation framework that allows these works to be contextualised with the depth they deserve.