The definitive illustrated overview of contemporary performance art.

Performance Now charts the development of live art across six continents since the turn of the 21st century. It reveals how performance, so integral to the history of art in the 20th century, has become an increasingly essential vehicle for communicating ideas across the globe in the new millennium.

Renowned authority RoseLee Goldberg discusses key themes in performance art practice, from beauty, global citizenship and political activism to performance’s intersection with film and technology, dance, theatre and architecture. Each chapter is followed by illustrated profiles of the world’s best-known performance artists, accompanied by extended captions that assess the importance of specific works to the practice of international performance art.

A visually exciting and stimulating overview of this most varied art form, Performance Now is the go-to reference for artists, art students and historians as well as avant-garde theatre and movie goers.

'An indispensable chronicling of both art and its time' - Barbara Kruger
'Extensive' - Dazed & Confused
'Consistently thought-provoking' - frieze

RoseLee Goldberg is Director of Performa, a multi-disciplinary arts organization for the research, development and presentation of 21st-century visual art performance. Among her other books are Performance: Live Art Since the 60s and Laurie Anderson, both published by Thames & Hudson.