Imaging Her Erotics: Essays, Interviews, Projects [Hardcover]

Carolee Schneemann (Author)

Book Description

Series: Writing Art | Publication Date: November 1, 2001

Carolee Schneemann is one of the pioneers of performance, installation, and video art. Although other visual artists, such as Salvador Dali and Yves Klein, had used live self-portraiture and performance as a vehicle for public provocation, Schneemann was among the first to use her body to animate the relationship between the world of lived experience and the imagination, as well as issues of the erotic, the sacred, and the taboo. In the 1960s, her work prefigured the feminist movement's sexual self-assertion for women, and by the mid-1970s, her work anticipated the field of women's studies and its critique of patriarchal institutions. In the 1980s, she was one of the first to experiment with virtual environments.

Imaging Her Erotics integrates images from Schneemann's works in painting, collage, drawing, and video sculptures with written material drawn from the artist's journals, dream diaries, essays, and lectures. Encompassing four decades of her work, it demonstrates her profound influence on artists in all media. An opening essay by Kristine Stiles presents Schneemann's major themes and places her work in a historical context. Among other topics, the book covers Schneemann's response to the widespread use by artists of the ideas of theoreticians such as Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida, and Jacques Lacan; her relationship to male artists such as Joseph Cornell, Robert Morris, and Claes Oldenburg; and reminiscences about her friends Ana Mendieta, Charlotte Moorman, and Hannah Wilke. The book also contains essays by Jay Murphy and David Levi-Strauss and interviews with the artist by Kate Haug, Linda Montano, and Aviva Rahmani.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From the perspective of today's art world, where "transgression" has become for many little more then a quick path to fame and notoriety, it is difficult to grasp the extraordinary bravery and daring of Carolee Schneeman, the pioneering performance artist whose career is lavishly documented in this volume. Decades before "The Body" became an object of safe academic discourse, Schneeman was putting hers on the line, creating a series of films, actions and performances perhaps most notably the majestically Dionysian Meat Joy of 1964 that have become touchstones not only in the history of performance art but also in the development of feminist aesthetics. By its very nature, performance is hard to capture between the covers of a book, but the quality and extent of the images presented here, while no substitute for having been there, capture events with an almost cinematic completeness. Also here in addition to a number of interviews and essays by such critics as David Levi-Strauss and Thomas McEvilley are a number of Schneeman's own writings, which include a description of a formative encounter with poet Charles Olson, whose patriarchal warning that classical drama died when "the c began to speak," Schneeman, with characteristic inventiveness, transforms into good career advice. In fact, from a spirited examination of Valerie Solanas to an elegy for slain colleague Ana Mendieta, Schneeman's writings form the book's core, and it is good to have them in one place. What emerges most powerfully from this book which also covers (with 150 illustrations) Schneeman's work in painting, photography and video is the artist's extraordinarily generous and questing personality. In an era when so much art seems directed at the audience with a sneer, Schneeman's Emersonian optimism and joie de vivre are both example and challenge.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

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 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 357 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (November 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262194597
• ISBN-13: 978-0262194594
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 8.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,714,419 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Feminism is fully alive and vibrant in Carolee Schneemann, January 16, 2002

By 

Pamela A. Strugar (Pasadena, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Imaging Her Erotics: Essays, Interviews, Projects (Hardcover)

This is a wonderful career survey of this brave artist. Her experience as a feminist artist painter sculptor film maker performer dancer thinker is very inspirational. Carolees relationship to her sexual body and the power of transformation throught the body is so very human healing strong and deeply intelligent. The power of feminist art to change art history and change the world is seen through her performances and paintings. For me the work in this book demands that I remember the struggle women artits had and still have- its only been 30 - 40 years of feminist body art! Let us never forget the struggles of these great artists who are women....This is a wonderful book!