Frank Moore

Who was Frank Moore?

Frank James Moore was an American performance artist, shaman, poet, essayist, painter, musician and Internet/television personality who experimented in art, performance, ritual, and shamanistic teaching since the late 1960s.

Moore is perhaps most well known as one of the NEA-funded artists targeted by Jesse Helms and the GAO in the early 90s for doing art that was labeled “obscene". Frank Moore was featured in the 1988 cult film Mondo New York, which chronicled the leading performance artists of that period. He is well known for long ritualistic performances with audience participation, nudity, and eroticism. But he has also become well known for his influential writings on performance, art, life, and cultural subversion, for his historic influence on the San Francisco Bay Area music and performance scene, and more recently for his performance/video archive on Vimeo.com that has been viewed by over 7 million people worldwide.

Moore coined the word, "eroplay" to describe physical play between adults released from the linear goals of sex and orgasm.