the PuPPeTeeR
-Dennis Oppenheim (1997), explaining about Theme for a Major Hit
An ArTisT is BoRn
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During Dennis Oppenheim's period of "surrogate performers," he began to shift even within this period, by using a number of marionettes and puppets featuring his face. Dennis was familiar with marionettes because he had made them as a child. They seemed to be an obvious way of contuining the performance-related self-referential autographical work without being physically part of the engagement. Dennis referred to the puppets as "surrogates", 18 inch high marionettes. Some of them danced from mechanically driven strings and others talked with a mechanical voice-activated lower jaw.
The moving marionettes were first used in a piece called Attempt to Raise Hell (1974). In this piece, magnets force the metal head of a small, seated figure with Dennis Oppenheim's face to slam into a huge, polished bell. The strike occurs at eye-level every one-hundred seconds and produces an echo lasting half of that duration. The sound of metal clashing against metal fills the room as well as the mind.
In Lecture from 1976, there is a room where a puppet with Dennis Oppenheim's face is giving a conference for a single spectator, another puppet, and is explaining the future of art and the crisis of the avant-garde artists with the great powers of anticipatory foresight. The piece seemed to proclaim the era of Earth and Body Art was over. It marked a turn toward representation rather than presence. Earlier works involved living cognition as a material of the piece; here, the cognitive process was externally represented- carried out as a communication between puppets.
Using puppets in performances is nothing new, of course. Puppet Theatre has existed for centuries, and is a universal form of entertainment. However, puppetry has suffered a number of distortions in this country, each tending to undermine its primary function as theatre. Certainly, this is what Oppenheim is doing here with his uses of puppets. By using puppets in such a new way he created a new form of puppetry - that of performance art.
The Puppet is, in essence, an extension of the puppeteer. The puppet is an emphasis of the character it is intended to reflect -in this case, Dennis Oppenheim. However, whether a puppet has the aspect of a human being, it has been created to perform, to entertain, and to make a statement. For example, in Attempt to Raise Hell, the puppet represented Oppenheim's attempted withdrawal from the use of his own body- individual or genetically extended- as an endangered art material. Remember, it was around this time that Oppenheim was starting to stray away from the Body Art movement, and this performance made an excellent point in trying to break away.
In one of his more famous pieces, Theme for a Major Hit (1974), a motor- driven twenty-four- inch high puppet with Oppenheim's face was attached to wires that were operated from above, causing strange contorted motions to be repeated over and over. The puppet was performing to a song written by Dennis Oppenheim with the lyrics "It ain't what you make, it's what makes you do it." Here, Oppenheim creates his own non-traditional puppet stage, in order to make a statement about his views on art. The puppet is merely a projection of the human being who controls it. This performance with a puppet, along with the lyrics, pointed out the necessity to pin down the motive for making art. Oppenheim's face on the puppet suggests that the artist is every moment being manipulated by external forces in ways that do not necessarily make any desirable sense.
Although Dennis Oppenheim does not use puppets in his art and performances any more, his contribution to the tradition of puppetry was significant, and should be remembered as such.
MeLinDa GonZaLeS.
Copyright © 2001 by University of North Texas. All rights reserved.
Revised: 27 Aug 2001 09:39:48 -0500
Attempt to Raise Hell, 1974.
Theme for a Major Hit, 1974
