Diogenes’s ancient public acts anticipated twentieth-century performance art

Evidence

That Diogenes’s actions in some ways prefigured performance art has not gone unnoticed by the contemporary art world. In a 1984 issue of Artforum, Thomas McEvilley presented some of Diogenes’s best “works” in “Diogenes of Sinope (c. 410–c. 320 BC): Selected Performance Pieces.” Arranged in this context, his acts indeed sound like the cousins of the works from the twentieth-century antics of Dada and Fluxus. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 249

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the art-historical strand of Odell’s mixed method that the reader wants to evaluate for capaciousness vs. evasion. — connects to: Diogenes refused civilization’s demands through public theatrical negation — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 244; Diogenes practiced philosophy as public performance rather than conversation — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 245; Preindustrial cities staged public performance and ceremony far more often than modern ones — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 204 (+2 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Diogenes refused civilization’s demands through public theatrical negation — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 244; Diogenes practiced philosophy as public performance rather than conversation — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 245; Preindustrial cities staged public performance and ceremony far more often than modern ones — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 204 (+2 more)