THESIS ABSTRACT 

Since his biological appearance the human being has been forced to 
create objects which facilitate his subsistence. In this process the Industrial 
Revolution is going to mark a moment of crucial importance in history, 
because the machine will assume many of the functions that, up-to-date, 
were a human occupation. Because of this, the individual will remain 
adhered, more than ever, to a technological process, a biological destination 
widespread and expanded by mechanisms that will alter deeply his 
relationship with the world. 

 Taking art as a reflection of society, the industry, the machine and 
the new age were adopted as the epicentre of the 20th century artistic 
representations and, with that, the traditional language was subverted. The 
most critical sectors tried to tear into pieces the high culture speech through 
the merger with the popular, creating, this way, a fundamental equation: 
art = life. Public places, theatres, but specially bars and cafés were the scene 
of peculiar representations in which the body was the main starring, a 
particular way of thinking about the repercussions that skill inflicted into the 
body and his real role in the contemporary society. 

 Freedom and enthusiasm were the concepts that defined the last 
century artistic avant-garde, an euphoria that vanished because of the 
Second World War. The body and his representation remained hidden. After 
the tragedy, the society was victim of a deeply conservative restructuring 
order. 

 A decade was enough for certain intellectual sectors to feel they 
could not continue accepting a cultural and artistic desideologized content. 
That politically conscious state of mind encouraged demonstrations and 
protests recovering the purest Dadaist style as a way to attack the 
establishment. At the end of 1950s, both in The United States and in 
Europe, the action body was restored in the artistic representation as a 
necessary language to attack the bourgeois ideology. 


 This leads us to 1968, a key date when the social conscience wake 
up against the totalitarianism and when the body recovers his category. 
Performance —a term that was not used as such until 1970— turned into the 
most appropriate language to represent the new aesthetic values, as well as 
to put into practice the most protest theories. A sociological art concept was 
consolidated little by little. It defended the body integration into the creative 
process, proofs that were coined as Body Art. 

 In the 1970s we can speak again about somacentrism. Nevertheless 
—at this moment Body extensions in the context of the Body Art. Revolution 
of the wish makes sense—, some artists, unsatisfied with a materialistic 
body exploration, adopted elements of the embodiment such as dresses, 
accessories and objects of different nature. That interest that avant-guard 
artists showed for technology was transformed into a different one that, in 
spite of its differences, fulfilled the same functions that the machine 
acquired at the beginning of 20th century: the «corporal extension». 

 This time it was not necessary a war to relieve the 1970s radical 
ideology, the appearance of AIDS, a sharp economic crisis and, as a result, 
an attitude of resignation and disillusion, ten years later, the end of this 
period. The digital age popularization has taken charge of showing a reality 
that moves back to the most reactionary values.