Valie Export, Who Made Art With Her Naked Body, Dies at 85

Valie Export, a provocative performance artist and filmmaker who confronted the misogyny of mass media and society at large with the undeniable truth of her own body, died on May 15 in Vienna. She was 85.

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Ms. Export was best known for two pieces she staged in the late 1960s and early ’70s.

In the first, “Action Pants: Genital Panic,” she walked into a movie theater in Munich in 1968, wearing crotchless pants that put her exposed genitals directly in the sightline of seated theatergoers. The intention, she said, was to “challenge the voyeurism of cinema.”

As she walked down the aisle, she announced, “Now you will see in reality what you normally see on the screen.”

In a photo taken a year later to commemorate the piece, Ms. Export underscored the radically confrontational nature of the work by accessorizing her all-black, crotchless outfit with a machine gun.