Gender and art

"In 1968, Carolee Schneemann caused outrage in Britain simply by giving a talk about art. "I wore farmers overalls," she says, "and I had lots of oranges stuffed everywhere. It was about Cézanne, so I showed slides and talked about his influence – and I kept undressing and dressing. I was naked under my overalls and I'd throw these oranges into the audience, like a still life escaping. Then I'd do my overalls back up and continue the lecture.

[...]

If the point no longer needs making, it's thanks to people like Schneemann. The artist, now 73, has spent her life smashing taboos and shocking audiences. She was at the forefront of movements that only later came to be known as body art, performance art and feminist art, paving the way for the likes of Marina Abramović, Cindy Sherman, Tracey Emin – and even Lady Gaga. [...]"

Water Light/Water Needle is at the Hales Gallery, London E1, until 12 April.

http://www.halesgallery.com/exhibitions/60/installation_shots/

"Carolee Schneemann is perhaps most widely known for her 1964 piece "Meat Joy," in which a mass of naked youths frolic and roll amongst chicken legs, paint, sausages and fish. It's a feast of raw flesh and a celebration of bodies of all kinds. [...]

The artist, now 74, is lauded as one of the pioneers of feminist performance art, and although this strand of her work is most discussed, it is only a portion of her contribution as an artist. Schneemann's historical and political works take center stage in her current exhibition on view at the Musée départemental d'art contemporain de Rochechouart, a museum three hours outside of Paris. The exhibition, entitled "History Works," include "Viet-Flakes," a compilation of Vietnam War-era horrors garnered from magazine and newspaper clippings, as well as "Terminal Velocity," a series of bodies falling from the World Trade Centers on September 11, 2001. Schneemann approaches the terrors of war and intrusions on cultural freedoms with the same ferocity as she does women's liberties -- and with the same aesthetic acuity as well."

On the occasion of the LIFE BOOK exhibition, the WRO Art Center hosted Carolee Schneemann for the first time in Wrocław and in Poland. 

Schneemann, a pioneer of performance art, body art and avant-garde cinema, has spent over five decades ‘breaking the frames’ of the art world, using a wide range of expressive forms and challenging our attitudes toward feminism, gender, sexuality and identity. 

The Carolee Schneemann LIFE BOOK exhibition is an expansion on Mariella Nitoslawska’s film Breaking the Frame, documenting Schneemann’s life and work. The exhibition is a new approach to material that Schneeman and Nitoslawska created during six years they spent making the film.

WRO Art Center, Widok 7, Wrocław, Poland

http://www.wrocenter.pl/en/

"It’s been half a century since Carolee Schneemann began the series of daring, erotic, transgressive works that played off her own image as a beauty, the role of the female nude in art history, and the scrappy objects her friends and colleagues were making to push at the boundaries of art and life."