Many artists in that scene occupied Downtown spaces left empty as traditional industry declined. Schneemann was a founder member of the Judson Dance Theater, that extraordinary gathering of figures in Greenwich Village who would help determine the course of art and performance over several decades, including Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown. She studied at the University of Illinois before making her way to New York in 1961, where she was quickly immersed in the Downtown performance scene that became the crucible for a revolution in art, theatre and contemporary dance. She was born in rural Pennsylvania, where she grew up doing farm work (“there’s a deep connection between the demands of farming and the demands of art creation”, she told the artist Pipilotti Rist in a wonderful 2017 conversation for Interview magazine ). Her influence was enormous: as Schneemann herself put it when talking to the Guardian in 2014, her work “became a bridge that had to be crossed by young feminists working with their bodies.” The pioneering painter, performance artist and film-maker Carolee Schneemann has died, aged 79.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |