Schneemann, Carolee, 1939-....

American painter and performance artist who uses her body to explore personal expression, sexual taboos and feminist issues in her art.

Carolee Schneemann (1939- ) is a painter, photographer, and performance artist in New Paltz, N.Y. Judith Olch Richards (1947- ) is former executive director of iCI in New York, N.Y.

Schneemann's multidisciplinary work focuses on the body, gender, and sexuality.

Biographical Note

Carolee Schneemann actively engaged in performance art, experimental film-making, the Fluxus movement and feminist theory in the 1960s-1970s. The artist is best known for the provocative use of her nude body to explore personal expression, sexual taboos and feminism in both multi-media performances and solo improvisational work. Born in 1939, Schneemann studied painting at the University of Illinois and Bennington College in the late-1950s. Her performance work evolved out of a desire to express more than she could within the confines of her paintings, and retains some of the gestural qualities of abstract expressionism and the cluttered look of assemblage. In addition to choreographing her own scripts, Schneemann participated in some of the most influential events of the 1960s, including: Philip Corner's "An Environment for Sound and Motion" at the Living Theater (1962), Claes Oldenburg's "Store Days" (1962), Robert Rauschenberg's theater experiments, Robert Morris' "Site" (1964), and in Fluxus concerts.

Schneemann has made many films, some of an experimental nature and others which document her performances. "Fuses" (1964-67), her most notorious film, presents a woman's perspective of intimacy and eroticism. The film was edited for two years, during which time Schneemann burned, scratched, painted, glued, and layered its images to create a fluid sense of sexuality. In the 1970s, Schneemann conducted research on earth goddesses and ancient mythology in search of female power structures. She realized that a certain component of her work had always explored these themes, such as the use of snakes in "Eye Body" (1963). Schneemann's studies permeate her writings, and she has taught classes on feminist art and theory. Since the mid-1970s, Schneemann has performed infrequently, preferring instead to concentrate on painting, exhibiting, lecturing and teaching.