ABSTRACT
BODY HORROR IS A specific subgenre of horror film in which the body becomes the subject of terror. Mutilation, disintegration, transformation and parasitism are common themes in body horror. Body art departed from Jackson Pollock’s action painting and used the artist’s own body for artistic expression. Oft en these expressions were performances and video recordings that involved self-harm, mutilation, masochism and intoxication. One of the fi rst artists in this movement was Frenchman Yves Klein who, contrary to American Expressionist artists who were interested in expressing their personalities on the canvas, purported to express spirituality through the monochrome of the color blue. In one of his performances called Living Brush (1960), he asked a group of women to paint their torsos in blue before falling on a canvas and leaving their body print. Th e same year, he became interested in the subjects of telepathy and levitation. He had a picture taken of himself jumping from a two-story building published in his one-day journal that was distributed through all newsstands in Paris.
