Carolee Schneemann

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Carolee Schneemann
Neo-dada, Fluxus, happening

Carolee Schneemann (October 12, 1939 – March 6, 2019)

National Film Theatre
, and many other venues.

Keynote address given by Schneemann on October 23, 2008

Schneemann taught at several universities, including the

happenings.[7]

Biography

Carolee Schneemann was born Carol Lee Schneiman and raised in

pantheist", due to her relationship with, and respect for, nature.[10] As a young adult, Schneemann often visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where she cited her earliest connections between art and sexuality to her drawings from ages four and five, which she drew on her father's prescription tablets.[10] Her family was generally supportive of her naturalness and freeness with her body.[11] Schneemann attributed her father's support to the fact that he was a rural physician who had to often deal with the body in various states of health.[11]

Schneemann was awarded a full scholarship to New York's

The Juilliard School.[11]

Her first experience with

graduate degree.[13][14]

Schneemann's image is included in the iconic 1972 poster Some Living American Women Artists by Mary Beth Edelson.[15]

Early work

Schneemann began her art career as a painter in the late 1950s.

happenings when she organized A Journey through a Disrupted Landscape, inviting people to "crawl, climb, negotiate rocks, climb, walk, go through mud".[20] Soon thereafter she met Allan Kaprow, the primary figure of happenings, in addition to artists Red Grooms and Jim Dine.[20] Influenced by figures such as Simone de Beauvoir, Antonin Artaud, Maya Deren, Wilhelm Reich, and Kaprow, Schneemann found herself drawn away from painting.[21]

In 1962, Schneemann moved with Tenney from their residence in Illinois to New York City, when Tenney obtained a job with

Paul Blackburn, who published some of her writings.[24]

Production on Schneemann's work Eye Body began in 1963. Schneemann created a "loft environment" filled with broken mirrors, motorized umbrellas, and rhythmic color units.

Minoan Snake Goddess and, in fact, learned of it years later.[27] Upon its presentation to the public in 1963, art critics found the piece lewd and pornographic. Artist Valie Export cites Eye Body for the way in which Schneemann portrays "how random fragments of her memory and personal elements of her environment are superimposed on her perception."[28]

Film

The 1964 piece Meat Joy

Tolstoy with a Rauschenberg-like form.[31] Schneeman later said of the piece: “Sensuality was always confused with pornography. The old patriarchal morality of proper behaviour and improper behaviour had no threshold for the pleasures of physical contact that were not explicitly about sex.”[33]

In 1964, Schneemann began production of her 30-minute

16 mm Bolex camera,[18] as her cat, Kitch, observed nearby.[34] Schneemann then altered the film by staining, burning, and directly drawing on the celluloid itself, mixing the concepts of painting and collage.[18] The segments were edited together at varying speeds and superimposed with photographs of nature, which she juxtaposed against her and Tenney's bodies and sexual actions.[36] Fuses was motivated by Schneemann's desire to know whether a woman's depiction of her own sexual acts was different from pornography and classical art[37] as well as a reaction to Stan Brakhage's Loving (1957), Cat's Cradle (1959) and Window Water Baby Moving (1959).[38][18] Schneemann herself appeared in some Brakhage films, including Cat's Cradle, in which she wore an apron at Brakhage's insistence.[39] Despite her friendship with Brakhage, she later called the experience of being in Cat's Cradle "frightening," remarking that "whenever I collaborated, went into a male friend's film, I always thought I would be able to hold my presence, maintain an authenticity. It was soon gone, lost in their celluloid dominance—a terrifying experience—experiences of true dissolution."[39] She showed Fuses to her contemporaries as she worked on it in 1965 and 1966, receiving mostly positive feedback.[18] But many critics described it as self-indulgent, "narcissistic exhibitionism".[18] There were especially strong reactions to the film's cunnilingus scene. While Fuses is viewed as a "proto-feminist" film, Schneemann felt that feminist film historians largely neglected it.[18] The film lacked the fetishism and objectification of the female body seen in much male-oriented pornography.[40] Two years after its completion, it won a Cannes Film Festival Special Jury Selection prize.[18] Pop artist Andy Warhol, with whom Schneemann was acquainted, having spent time at The Factory, drolly remarked that Schneemann should have taken the film to Hollywood.[41] Fuses became the first film in Schneemann's Autobiographical Trilogy.[36] Though her works of the 1960s shared many of the ideas of the concurrent Fluxus artists, she remained independent of any specific movement.[7] They formed the groundwork for the feminist art movement of the late 1960s and 1970s.[7]

Schneemann performing her piece Interior Scroll, 1975. Schneemann along with Yves Klein in France, and Yayoi Kusama, Charlotte Moorman, and Yoko Ono in New York City were pioneers of performance based works of art, that often entailed nudity.[42]

Schneemann began work on her next film, Plumb Line, in 1968. It opens with a still shot of a man's face with a

plumb line in front of it before the entire image begins to burn.[36] Various images including Schneemann and the man appear in different quadrants of the frame while a disorienting soundtrack of music, sirens, and cat noises, among other things, plays in the background. The sound and visuals grow more intense as the film progresses, with Schneemann narrating about a period of physical and emotional illness.[36] The film ends with Schneemann attacking a series of projected images and a repetition of its opening segment.[36] During a showing of Plumb Line at a women's film festival, it was booed for the image of the man at the beginning of the film.[18]

From 1973 to 1976, in her ongoing piece Up to and Including Her Limits, a naked Schneemann is suspended from a tree surgeon's harness attached from the ceiling above a canvas. Using the motions of her body to make marks with a crayon, the artist maps time processes as a video monitor records her movement. She manually lowers and raises the rope on which she is suspended to reach all corners of the canvas.

Abstract Expressionism and Action painting, specifically work by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Schneemann arrived at the museum when it opened, with the cleaners, guards, secretaries, maintenance crew, and remained until it closed. Through this practice she explored the political and personal implications of the museum space by enabling the place of art creation and art presentation to become one. Schneemann intended to do away with performance, a fixed audience, rehearsals, improvisation, sequences, conscious intention, technical cues, and a central metaphor or theme in order to explore what was left.[11]: 165  In 1984, she completed the final video, a compilation of video footage from six performances: the Berkeley Museum, 1974; London Filmmaker's Cooperative, 1974; Artists Space, NY, 1974; Anthology Film Archives, NY, 1974; The Kitchen, NY, 1976; and the Studio Galerie, Berlin, 1976.[43]

In 1975, Schneemann performed Interior Scroll in East Hampton, New York, and at the Telluride Film Festiva. This was a notable Fluxus-influenced piece featuring her use of text and body. In her performance, Schneemann entered wrapped in a sheet, under which she wore an apron. She disrobed and then got on a table where she outlined her body with mud. Several times, she would take "action poses", similar to those in figure drawing classes.[44] Concurrently, she read from her book Cézanne, She Was a Great Painter. Then she dropped the book and slowly extracted from her vagina a scroll from which she read. Schneeman's speech described a parody version of an encounter where she received criticism on her films for their "persistence of feelings" and "personal clutter". Art Historian David Hopkins suggests that this performance was a comment on "internalized criticism" and possibly "feminist interest" in female writing.[45]

Schneemann's feminist scroll speech, according to performance theorist Jeanie Forte, made it seem as if Schneemann's "vagina itself is reporting [...] sexism".

off-broadway show The Vagina Monologues.[46] In 1978, Schneemann finished the last film, Kitch's Last Meal, in what was later called her "Autobiographical Trilogy".[36]

1980s–2010s

Carolee Schneemann in Speaking Portraits

Schneemann said that in the 1980s her work was sometimes considered by various feminist groups to be an insufficient response to many feminist issues of the time.[16] Her 1994 piece Mortal Coils commemorated 15 friends and colleagues who had died over two years, including Hannah Wilke, John Cage, and Charlotte Moorman.[32] The piece consisted of rotating mechanisms from which hung coiled ropes while slides of the commemorated artists were shown on the walls.[32]

From 1981 to 1988, Schneemann's piece Infinity Kisses was displayed at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The wall installation, consisting of 140 self-shot images, depicted Schneemann kissing her cat at various angles.

In December 2001, she unveiled Terminal Velocity, which consisted of a group of photographs of people falling to their deaths from the

September 11, 2001 attacks.[47][48] In this and another of Schneemann's works that used the same images, Dark Pond, Schneemann sought to "personalize" the attacks' victims[49] by digitally enhancing and enlarging the figures in the images, isolating them from their surroundings.[50]

Schneemann continued to produce art later in life, including the 2007 installation Devour, which featured videos of recent wars contrasted with everyday images of United States daily life on dual screens.[16]

She was interviewed for the 2010 film !Women Art Revolution.[51]

2010s−2020s

In 2020, Schneemann's work was included in a major group show at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida. My Body, My Rules investigated the artistic practices of 23 female-identified artists in the 21st century, including Louise Bourgeois, Ida Applebroog, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Ana Mendieta, Wanguechi Mutu, Mickalene Thomas, and Francesca Woodman.[52][53]

Themes

One of Schneemann's work's primary focuses was the separation between eroticism and the politics of gender.[7] Her cat Kitch, which was featured in works such as Fuses (1967) and Kitch's Last Meal (1978), was a major figure in her work for almost 20 years.[54][55] She used Kitch as an "objective" observer to her and Tenney's sexual activities, saying that she was unaffected by human mores.[36] One of her later cats, Vesper, was featured in the photographic series Infinity Kisses (1986). In a wall-size collection of 140 photos, Schneemann documented her daily kisses with Vesper and "the artist at life".[54] With numerous works foregrounding the centrality of feline companions in Schneemann's life, scholars now locate her work as significant for new accounts of human-animal relations.[56]

She listed as an aesthetic influence on herself and James Tenney the poet Charles Olson, especially the collage Maximus at Gloucester but also in general, "in relationship to his concern for deep imagery, sustained metaphor, and also that he had been researching Tenney’s ancestors", despite his occasional sexist comments.[57]

Painting

Schneemann considered her photographic and body pieces based in painting despite appearing otherwise on the surface.

figure-ground, relationality (both through use of her body), and similitude (through the use of cats and trees).[60] Stiles says that the issues of sex and politics in Schneemann's work merely dictate how the art is shaped, rather than the formal concepts found behind it.[61] For example, Schneemann relates the colors and movement featured in Fuses to brush strokes in painting.[18] Her 1976 piece Up to and Including Her Limits, too, invokes the gestural brush strokes of the abstract expressionists with Scheemann swinging from ropes and scribbling with crayons onto a variety of surfaces.[32]

Feminism and the body

Schneemann acknowledged that she was often called a feminist icon and that she is an influential figure to female artists, but noted that she reached out to male artists as well.[16] Though she was noted for being a feminist figure, her works explore issues in art and rely heavily on her broad knowledge of art history.[62][63] Though works such as Eye Body were meant to explore the processes of painting and assemblage, rather than address feminist topics, they still possess a strong female presence.

In Schneemann's earlier work, she is seen as addressing issues of patriarchal hierarchies in the 1950s American gallery space. She addressed these issues through various performance pieces that sought to create agency for the female body as both sensual and sexual, while simultaneously breaking gallery space taboos against nude performance.[64]

Unlike much other feminist art, Schneemann's revolves around sexual expression and liberation, rather than referring to victimization or repression of women.

The Sexual Revolution by Wilhelm Reich. These may have influenced her belief that women must represent themselves through writing about their experiences if they wish to gain equality.[30] She preferred her term "art istorical" (without the h), so as to reject the "his" in history.[69]

Influence

Much of Schneemann's work was performance-based, so photographs, video documentation, sketches, and artist's notes are often used to examine her work.

New Museum of Contemporary Art and organized by senior curator Dan Cameron.[7] Previously, these works were dismissed as narcissism or otherwise overly sexualized forms of expression.[21]

Critic Jan Avgikos wrote in 1997, "Prior to Schneemann, the female body in art was mute and functioned almost exclusively as a mirror of masculine desire."[21] Critics have also noted that the reaction to Schneemann's work has changed since its original performance. Nancy Princenthal notes that modern viewers of Meat Joy are still squeamish about it; however, now the reaction is also due to the biting of raw chicken or to the men hauling women over their shoulders.[citation needed]

Schneemann's work from the late 1950s continues to influence later artists such as

Complex ranked Interior Scroll the 15th-best work of performance art in history, writing, "Schneemann is argued to have realigned the gender balance of conceptual and minimal art with her 1975 piece".[71]

Death

Carolee Schneemann died at age 79 on March 6, 2019,[72] after suffering from breast cancer for two decades.[73]

Awards

Some works

  • 1962–63: Four ~Fur Cutting Boards
  • 1963: Eye Body: 36 Transformative Actions
  • 1964: Meat Joy
  • 1965: Viet Flakes
  • Autobiographical Trilogy
    • 1964-67: Fuses
    • 1968-71: Plumb Line
    • 1973-78: Kitch's Last Meal
  • 1972: Blood Work Diary[80]
  • 1973-76: Up to and Including Her Limits
  • 1975: Interior Scroll
  • 1981: Fresh Blood: A Dream Morphology
  • 1981-88: Infinity Kisses
  • 1983-2006: Souvenir of Lebanon
  • 1986: Hand/Heart for Ana Mendieta
  • 1986-88: Venus Vectors
  • 1987-88: Vesper's Pool
  • 1990: Cycladic Imprints
  • 1991: Ask the Goddess
  • 1994: Mortal Coils
  • 1995: Vulva's Morphia[81]
  • 2001: More Wrong Things
  • 2001: Terminal Velocity
  • 2007: Devour
  • 2013: Flange 6rpm

Selected bibliography

  • Cézanne, She Was A Great Painter (1976)
  • More Than Meat Joy: Performance Works and Selected Writings (1979, 1997)
  • Early and Recent Work (1983)
  • Imaging Her Erotics: Essays, Interviews, Projects (2001)
  • Carolee Schneemann: Uncollected Texts (2018)

In popular culture

Her name appears in the lyrics of the

Hot Topic".[82]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Carolee Schneemann Pioneering Feminist Artist Dies Age 79". Artlyst. 7 March 2019.
  2. ^ Smith, Isabella (9 March 2016). "Carolee Schneemann on Feminism, Activism and Ageing". AnOther magazine.
  3. ^ "Carolee Schneemann | Biography, Art, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2020-03-04.
  4. ^ "Carolee Schneemann | artnet". www.artnet.com. Retrieved 2020-03-04.
  5. ^ Schneemann, Carolee (October 25, 2014). "Notes on Fuseology: Carolee Schneemann Remembers James Tenney". Border Crossings Magazine (Interview). Interviewed by Robert Enright.
  6. ^ "Carolee Schneemann Art, Bio, Ideas". The Art Story. Retrieved 2020-03-04.
  7. ^
    JSTOR 777735
    .
  8. ^ Judith Olch Richards, ‘Oral History Interview with Carolee Schneemann’, 1 March 2009, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, accessible here: https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-carolee-schneemann-15672#transcript; and ‘Selected Chronology’, Carolee Schneemann: Unforgivable, ed. Kenneth White (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2015), p. 308.
  9. ^ "Carolee Schneemann Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works". The Art Story. Retrieved 2018-05-02.
  10. ^ a b Montano, pg. 132.
  11. ^
    ISBN 978-0-262-69297-7
    .
  12. ^ Montano, pp. 132-33.
  13. ISBN 978-0-7734-5559-7
    .
  14. ^ Schoen, Christian (May 29, 2008). "The Icelandic Muse". No. 18. LIST Icelandic Art News. Archived from the original on 2011-10-05.
  15. ^ "Some Living American Women Artists/Last Supper". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved 21 January 2022.
  16. ^ a b c d Vaughan, R. M. (2007-04-14). "Still crashing borders after all these years; The monstrous and the mundane collide in a massive survey of Carolee Schneemann's taboo-busting art". The Globe and Mail. p. R18.
  17. ^ Harris, Jane (1996). "Review / Carolee Schneemann". Plexus. Retrieved 2007-11-08.
  18. ^
    S2CID 167384684
    .
  19. ^ Thomas Patin and Jennifer McLerran (1997). Artwords: A Glossary of Contemporary Art Theory. Westport, CT: Greenwood. p. 55. Archived from the original on 2019-07-27.
  20. ^ a b ND, p. 114.
  21. ^ a b c d e f g h i Newman, Amy (2002-02-03). "An Innovator Who Was the Eros of Her Own Art". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-11-01.
  22. ^ ND, p. 116.
  23. ^ a b ND, pg. 117.
  24. ^ ND, p. 118.
  25. ^
    JSTOR 777320
    .
  26. ^ "Eye Body: 36 Transformative Actions 1963". Carolee Schneemann. Retrieved 2007-01-31.
  27. ^ ND, p. 121.
  28. JSTOR 488108
    .
  29. ^ Meat Joy
  30. ^
    ISBN 978-0520257184
    .
  31. ^ a b c Princenthal, Nancy (October 1997). "The arrogance of pleasure - body art, Carolee Schneemann". Art in America. Archived from the original on 2008-04-21. Retrieved 2007-11-24.
  32. ^ a b c d e Glueck, Grace (1996-12-06). "Of a Woman's Body as Both Subject and Object". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-11-24.
  33. ISSN 0261-3077
    . Retrieved 2020-03-04.
  34. ^ a b c "Selected Works". Carolee Schneemann. Retrieved 2018-05-02.
  35. ^ Notes on Fuseology Carolee Schneemann Remembers James Tenney
  36. ^
    JSTOR 1211851
    .
  37. ^ NSRC staff (2005-03-22). "Hear Her Roar: Carolee Schneemann transforms art and discourse on the body, sexuality, and gender". American Sexuality. National Sexuality Resource Center. Archived from the original on 2007-11-22. Retrieved 2007-03-27.
  38. ^ Osterweil, Ara. "FUCK YOU! by Ara Osterweil". artforum.com. Retrieved 2016-06-19.
  39. ^ a b "An Interview with Carolee Schneemann," Wide Angle, 20(1) (1998), p20-49
  40. S2CID 195045929
    .
  41. ^ ND, p. 125.
  42. ^ "Interior Scroll, 1975". Carolee Schneemann. Retrieved 2014-03-13.
  43. ^ "Up to and Including Her Limits". Electronic Arts Intermix. Retrieved June 17, 2022.
  44. ^
    JSTOR 1146571
    .
  45. ISBN 978-0192842343
    .
  46. doi:10.1353/hyp.2005.0010
    . Retrieved 2007-11-05.
  47. ^ Valdez, Sarah (June–July 2006). "Carolee Schneemann at P.P.O.W". Art in America. Archived from the original on 2007-12-04. Retrieved 2007-11-09.
  48. ^ McQuaid, Cate (2007-11-08). "Taking control with her bodies of work". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2007-11-09.
  49. ^ Schneemann as quoted in Scobie, Ilka. "Corporeal". artnet.com. Retrieved 2007-11-09. The sequences personalize individuals who in their normal workday were thrown by impact into a gravitational plunge, or chose to escape incineration by leaping into space.
  50. ^ Buhmann, Stephanie (February 2006). "Carolee Schneemann: P.P.O.W". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 2007-11-09.
  51. ^ Anon (2018). "Artist, Curator & Critic Interviews". !Women Art Revolution - Spotlight at Stanford. Archived from the original on March 26, 2018. Retrieved August 23, 2018.
  52. ^ "Pérez Art Museum Miami Announces All-Female Exhibition • Pérez Art Museum Miami". Pérez Art Museum Miami. Retrieved 2023-06-27.
  53. ^ "MY BODY, MY RULES – LAST DAYS AT THE PÉREZ ART MUSEUM MIAMI - Arte Al Dia". www.artealdia.com. Retrieved 2023-06-27.
  54. ^
    S2CID 168095615
    .
  55. Time Out New York. 2007-10-25. Archived from the original
    on 2013-01-05. Retrieved 2007-11-09.
  56. ^ "Turner: Fall 2010". Depauw.edu. 2007-11-23. Retrieved 2014-03-13.
  57. ^ Carolee Schneemann Speaks, New England Journal of Aesthetic Research. Posted Oct. 11, 2007.
  58. ISBN 978-0-262-69297-7
    .
  59. ^ Stiles, p. 4.
  60. ^ Stiles, p. 8.
  61. ^ Stiles, p. 11.
  62. S2CID 57566253
    . Retrieved 2007-11-07.
  63. S2CID 57564222
    . Retrieved 2007-11-07.
  64. ^ "Carolee Schneemann Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works". The Art Story. Retrieved 2018-05-02.
  65. S2CID 190569842
    . Retrieved 2007-11-07.
  66. ISBN 978-0-9776894-0-8
    .
  67. ^ a b Birringer, pp. 34-35, 44.
  68. ^
    JSTOR 1358010
    .
  69. ^ Jones, Amelia (1998). "The Rhetoric of the Pose: Hannah Wilke". Body Art: Performing the Subject. p. 160.
  70. ^ Scheemann, Carolee; John Morgan (28 February 2017). Jaskey, Jenny; Benenson, A.E. (eds.). "Carolee's Magazine". Carolee's Magazine. The Magazine of the Artist's Institute (2): 200. Archived from the original on 12 April 2017. Retrieved 11 April 2017.
  71. ^ Eisinger, Dale (2013-04-09). "The 25 Best Performance Art Pieces of All Time". Complex. Archived from the original on 2014-07-30. Retrieved 2021-02-28.
  72. ^ "Carolee Schneemann, artist known for taboo-breaking performances, dies at 79 - The Washington Post". The Washington Post.
  73. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 2020-03-04.
  74. ^ "Carolee Schneemann | eyebeam.org". eyebeam.org. Retrieved 2016-01-28.
  75. ^ "Electronic Arts Intermix: Devour, Carolee Schneemann". www.eai.org. Retrieved 2016-02-01.
  76. ^ "United States Artists Official Website". Usafellows.org. Retrieved 2014-03-13.
  77. ^ "Women's Caucus for Art". Archived from the original on November 17, 2013. Retrieved March 12, 2014.
  78. ^ Edward M Gomez. "Music, art, innovation, peace: Yoko Ono presents 2012 Courage Awards for the Arts". Veteran Feminists of America. Archived from the original on August 6, 2017. Retrieved March 13, 2014.
  79. ^ Freeman, Nate (13 April 2017). "Catalogue for Mark Bradford's Venice Biennale Show Will Include Essays by Zadie Smith, Anita Hill".
  80. ^ Searle, Adrian (7 September 2022). "Smeared with mackerel, chased by police: the wild, miraculous art of Carolee Schneemann – review of Body Politics exhibition, the Barbican Art Gallery, 2022-2023". the Guardian.
  81. ^ Carolee Schneemann 'Vulva's Morphia' vol.6 July 2000 n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal pp.44_46-47
  82. ^ Oler, Tammy (October 31, 2019). "57 Champions of Queer Feminism, All Name-Dropped in One Impossibly Catchy Song". Slate Magazine.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Carolee Schneemann.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carolee_Schneemann&oldid=1218050478"