Carolee Schneemann
1939–2019

A seminal figure in the development of non-object-based art in the postwar era, Carolee Schneemann scrutinizes the dominant structures of society through her provocative, celebratory, and sensorial art. Her multidisciplinary practice—which includes performance, installation, film, video, painting, drawing, and writing— has dealt frankly with sexuality, taboos, gender, and the body alongside deeply researched topics such as anthropology, myth, symbolism, and art history. Schneemann was originally trained as a painter, and her early Abstract Expressionist paintings were an important influence on her first performance works, scatological and gestural events she termed “Kinetic Theater,” which combined performance and installation and developed alongside Fluxus and Happenings.

Her most famous of these works was Meat Joy, which was choreographed for nine performers—four men wearing only briefs coupled with four bikini-clad women (including the artist) and a “serving maid” who introduced raw meat and other items into their orgiastic action. It was first performed in 1964 at the Festival of Free Expression in Paris and then at Dennison Hall in London and the Judson Memorial Church in New York. In Schneemann’s own words, “Meat Joy has the character of an erotic rite: excessive, indulgent, a celebration of flesh as material: raw fish, chickens, sausages, wet paint, transparent plastic, rope brushes, paper scrap. Its propulsion is toward the ecstatic—shifting and turning between tenderness, wildness, precision, abandon: qualities which could at any moment be sensual, comic, joyous, repellent.” Schneemann edited the 16mm documentation of these three performances into a distinct experimental film by incorporating pop music, slow motion, montage editing, and poetic voice-over to create a dizzying and exuberant vision of the experience. It remains an essential, groundbreaking example of early feminist art.

Introduction

Carolee Schneemann (October 12, 1939 – March 6, 2019) was an American visual experimental artist, known for her multi-media works on the body, narrative, sexuality and gender. She received a B.A. in poetry and philosophy from Bard College and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois. Originally a painter in the Abstract Expressionist tradition, Schneeman was uninterested in the masculine heroism of New York painters of the time and turned to performance-based work, primarily characterized by research into visual traditions, taboos, and the body of the individual in relation to social bodies. Although renowned for her work in performance and other media, Schneemann began her career as a painter, saying: "I'm a painter. I'm still a painter and I will die a painter. Everything that I have developed has to do with extending visual principles off the canvas." Her works have been shown at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the London National Film Theatre, and many other venues.

Schneemann taught at several universities, including the California Institute of the Arts, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Hunter College, Rutgers University, and SUNY New Paltz. She also published widely, producing works such as Cézanne, She Was a Great Painter (1976) and More than Meat Joy: Performance Works and Selected Writings (1979). Her works have been associated with a variety of art classifications, including Fluxus, Neo-Dada, performance art, the Beat Generation, and happenings.

Wikidata identifier

Q299662

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Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed December 6, 2024.

Introduction

Known for a multidisciplinary practice that spanned 60 years, particularly performances that dealt with issues of gender and sexuality. She considered herself a painter but worked in multiple media, including photography and motion pictures. Her works are held in the collections of the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, New York’s MoMA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, London’s Tate Modern, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Roles

Artist, author, installation artist, media artist, painter, performance artist, photographer, video artist

ULAN identifier

500092112

Names

Carolee Schneemann

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Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed December 6, 2024.



On the Hour

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Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

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