In Memoriam Carolee Schneemann
Throughout her career Carolee Schneemann has used her body to examine the role of female sensuality in connection to the possibilities of political and personal liberation from predominantly oppressive social and aesthetic conventions. Drawing on the expressive possibilities of film, performance, photography, and installation, among other media, she has explored themes of generation and goddess imagery, sexuality, and everyday erotics, as well as personal biography and loss. Although renowned for her work in performance and other media, Schneemann began her career as a painter, stating, “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.” She has been acknowledged by many as progenitor of feminist art, performance art, and multimedia art.
Carolee was a 2011 recipient of the School of Art & Design Distinguished Alumni Award. Read more about her life in ArtNews.
Image: Detail of Carolee Schneemann Untitled, 1967. Photograph: Herbert Migdoll/Courtesy of the Estate of Carolee Schneemann, Galerie Lelong & Co., Hales Gallery, and P•P•O•W, New York.