Promotional Information

Standing alone and often naked, Carolee Schneemann has for the past forty years embodied what Lucy Lippard calls a 'mythological revolution.' Her mythic heroine is the 'eye body': the perceiving organism, simultaneously subject and object, which in itself becomes the refracting mirror of all history and political struggle, nature and culture, biology and religion, art and language. Imaging Her Erotics chronicles, through words and pictures, this artist's attempts to inscribe her own 'eye body' into the materials of painting and sculpture, photography and film, installation works and performances: her rapturous and remarkable quest to fuse with both the shamanic roots of civilization and the physical spaces of contemporary art. -- Shelly Rice, author of Parisian Views and editor of Inverted Odysseys: Maya Deren, Claude Cahun, Cindy Sherman Carolee Schneemann's legendary early film Fuses undertook to discover whether showing how sexual love looked corresponded to how it felt. But even the art world is organized into systems of resistance against 'imaging her erotics,' and her subsequent art has largely been dedicated to overcoming them. She has done this with humor, courage, tireless imagination, love, smarts, wisdom, goodness -- and an amazing cheerfulness. I cherish this book as a portrait of the artist as woman warrior fighting on behalf of us all. When art is free, everyone is freed. -- Arthur C. Danto, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Columbia University, and Art Critic, The Nation When I need to be reminded of art's sacredness, dignity, and necessity, I turn to the inspiring example of Carolee Schneemann's work. This volume gives beautiful testimony to the range and complexity of her achievement. -- Wayne Koestenbaum, Professor of English, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and author of Cleavage: Essays on Sex, Stars, and Aesthetics A seminal figure in 20th century art, Carolee Schneemann has produced a body of work that is as capacious as the time it grew up in. Her work is startling, smart, immediate, sensual, and thoughtful. Schneemann's films -- especially, for me, the magnificent two-screen 'Kitch's Last Meal' -- are, in the best sense, loving experiments in moving pictures. Her performances, like 'Up To and Including Her Limits,' make the living body signify as form and place. Schneemann's writing is delightful, witty, and breathlessly articulate. This new collection is vitally important to understanding Carolee Schneemann's significant and singular contributions to contemporary practices. -- Lynne Tillman, author of No Lease on Life and The Broad Picture

About the Author

Carolee Schneemann teaches in the MFA Program at Bard College. She is the winner of the Jimmy Ernst Award in Art presented by The American Academy of Arts and Letters. The $5000 prize is given to a "painter or sculptor whose lifetime contribution to his or her vision has been both consistent and dedicated."

Reviews

From the perspective of today's art world, it is difficult to grasp the extraordinary bravery and daring of Carolee Schneeman.
*Publishers Weekly*

Schneemann's work is founded on a penetrating intellect. Schneemann's is an erotics of pleasure, pain, and knowledge.
*Bookforum*

Schneeman's...work is finally accorded the comprehensive attention it deserves...stimulating and well-designed
*Booklist*

From the perspective of today's art world, it is difficult to grasp the extraordinary bravery and daring of Carolee Schneeman.

Schneemann's work is founded on a penetrating intellect. Schneemann's is an erotics of pleasure, pain, and knowledge.

Schneeman's...work is finally accorded the comprehensive attention it deserves...stimulating and well-designed

Complementing both Carolee Schneemann: Early & Recent Work 1960-1982 (o.p.) and More Than Meat Joy: Performance Works and Selected Writings (o.p. rev. ed.), this volume includes 150 black-and-white illustrations from Schneemann's vanguard works in addition to material from her journals, dream diaries, essays, and lectures spanning four decades. Schneemann's ecstatic and shocking oeuvre addresses sensational aspects of both the erotic and the political. Both innovative and provocative, her paintings, drawings, experimental films, and collages appeal to an underground audience. She is perhaps best known for Fuses (1960), her key contribution to avant-garde cinema, and traces of her performance piece "Meat Joy" (1964) appear in the works of Annie Sprinkle, Penny Arcade, Karen Finley, and Madonna. But her subversive expressions of female sexuality and experimentation with various media have not won her mainstream recognition. This highly representative volume offers readers a full sense of the diversity of this pioneer in performance art and ardent feminist's oeuvre. It is particularly valuable to performing arts collections because Schneemann's work remains so influential. However, as is often the case with performance stills, the black-and-white photographs fail to translate each work's vitality, making it difficult to perceive the profusion of Schneemann's performance pieces. Recommended for larger academic libraries with specialized collections in feminist or performance art or experimental theater. Rebecca Tolley-Stokes, East Tennessee State Univ. Lib., Johnson City Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.