Carolee Schneemann
This was the first U.S. museum exhibition devoted to the work of Carolee Schneemann, who, since the 1960s, had been a key a figure in the development of performance and body-based art. Using her own body as artistic medium, Schneemann introduced in her performance work of the 60s and 70s a raw physicality that challenged conventional ideas of the representation of women in art.
Carolee Schneemann: Up To And Including Her Limits featured over thirty works from the previous four decades. Emerging from a world of experimental film and music, poetry, Fluxus, Happenings, and environments, the artist’s early painting, collage, assemblage, and box constructions were partly an effort to free artistic practice from the static object. Incorporating her nude body in performance extended that investigation into the liberation of the female image from traditional representation and social mores. Her now legendary performance such as Meat Joy (1964), Up To And Including Her Limits (1973), and Interior Scroll (1975) were represented in the exhibition as documentation - notes, scores, photographs, video, and film, and reconfigured in mixed media installations.
This exhibition gave overdue recognition to an important artist whose work influenced future generations of artists using the body, such as Matthew Barney and Janine Antoni, and highlighted a critical moment in the development of performance and feminism in artistic practice.
Carolee Schneemann
Up To And Including Her Limits, 1982
first performed in December 1973
two large-scale drawings, harness with maila rope, two video decks with six monitors, 8mm film projector, video compliation of various performances edited by Carolee Schneemann
dims. variable
Carolee Schneemann
Letter to Lou Andreas Salomé, 1965
mixed media on masonite
77 1/2 x 48 x 3 1/2 ins.
196.9 x 121.9 x 8.9 cm
Carolee Schneemann
Mortal Coils, 1994
four slide projectors, two dissolve units, motorized mirrors, sixteen motorized 3/4" manila ropes, photo blueprint text, lights, booklets, and flour
dims. variable
Carolee Schneemann
Plague Column: Known Unknown, 1995
xerox print of cancer cells inkjet print on plywood with plastic framed edges
36 x 12 ins. each
91.4 x 30.5 cm each
Carolee Schneemann
Video Rocks, 1989
handmade "rocks" (cement, ashes, sawdust, urine, ground glass), lightning rods, four video decks with eight monitors, and wall-scale canvas (ashes, cement, paint and sand)
dims. variable
Carolee Schneemann
Eye Body (Thirty-six Transformative Actions), December 1963
twenty-eight unique black-and-white prints by Erró
dims. variable
Carolee Schneemann: Up To And Including Her Limits (installation view), New Museum, New York, NY, 1996. Photo by Fred Scruton
Carolee Schneemann: Up To And Including Her Limits (installation view), New Museum, New York, NY, 1996. Photo by Fred Scruton
Carolee Schneemann: Up To And Including Her Limits (installation view), New Museum, New York, NY, 1996. Photo by Fred Scruton
Carolee Schneemann: Up To And Including Her Limits (installation view), New Museum, New York, NY, 1996. Photo by Fred Scruton
Carolee Schneemann: Up To And Including Her Limits (installation view), New Museum, New York, NY, 1996. Photo by Fred Scruton
Carolee Schneemann: Up To And Including Her Limits (installation view), New Museum, New York, NY, 1996. Photo by Fred Scruton
Carolee Schneemann: Up To And Including Her Limits (installation view), New Museum, New York, NY, 1996. Photo by Fred Scruton
Carolee Schneemann: Up To And Including Her Limits (installation view), New Museum, New York, NY, 1996. Photo by Fred Scruton
Carolee Schneemann: Up To And Including Her Limits (installation view), New Museum, New York, NY, 1996. Photo by Fred Scruton
Carolee Schneemann: Up To And Including Her Limits (installation view), New Museum, New York, NY, 1996. Photo by Fred Scruton
Thinking is not an incorporeal process. The mind is a muscle. Carolee Schneemann works from this reality.
Never before have we had an opportunity to experience the breadth of Schneemann’s artistic activity and to consider the complexity of her “transformative actions,” which chart a path from Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism, from Assemblage to “real-time” art grounded in the manipulation of the body.
Using her nude body as "visual territory," the performance artist Carolee Schneemann has for some 30 years danced on the edge of the mainstream art world.