John Fare is a fictional performance artist who allegedly used robotic surgery to remove parts of his body onstage as part of his act. His final performance was allegedly suicide by beheading. The story originated in 1968 and is generally considered an urban legend.
Response
The story was reprinted in a fanzine made in collaboration with the bandCoil in 1987. That publication included more correspondence with Isaacs, who said, "I know of no such person as John Fare. In the sixties I had a series of mixed media concerts in my gallery, and out of this came the myth of John Fare. Every five years or so, someone rediscovers the myth and writes me a letter such as yours." Fare's alleged performance was emulated during a Nocturnal Emissions concert in London in 1997. Writing about the event, a British music journalist recounts: "Fare cuts an eccentric figure. He wears trousers made from zips and has a diagram of a brain tattooed onto his shaven scalp. The performance artist placed his left hand on a chopping board with the fingers spread. Fare’s assistant, Jill Orr, is partially sighted and she slammed an axe between her boyfriend’s pinkies with increasing speed. Eventually the axe severed Fare’s little finger. This was the end of the performance art element within the evening’s entertainment". Fare has been mentioned in connection with body art, industrial culture, and the practices of Rudolf Schwarzkogler and Bob Flanagan, and, like other performance artists, has been seen as a successor of the Christian martyrs. He has also been mentioned in the Guardian in connection with the German artistGregor Schneider Critic Audrone Zukauskaite examined the durability of this legend in Art Lies magazine. Artists Gabriel Lester, Mariana Castillo Deball, "the estate of John Fare," René Gabri, Mario Garcia Torres, and Juozas Laivys explored themes of the story in a 2007 Gallery GB Agency exhibit in France. While Lester acknowledged Fare was "an apparition, an artist thought to have existed," he said Fare embodied the culmination of romantic myth of the artist cursed, "someone who has probably never existed, and yet lives forever." Christopher Priest wrote the short story "The Head and the Hand" with a similar plot in 1972.
