Carolee Schneemann

Carolee Schneemann was a very interesting woman to study because of how strange she and her work was. As I researched her I was immediately drawn to the very thing that her works try to dispel. I was drawn in by the vulgarity, the strangeness, the sexuality and the rawness of the pieces. However, upon further analyzing the works, I came realize how they use societal conventions to make a broader statement about who we are as a society. In her works like “Meat Joy” and “Fuses”, the subjects and the aesthetic immediately point to a pornographic culture. However, when you look beyond the naked bodies and the sexuality of the piece, you get down to the essence of what Carolee Schneemann explores, which is human connection. All her life she has explored the relationship between man and woman and has fought the patriarchal system that has kept her from achieving true equality and freedom. In these works she achieves that freedom by removing male dominance and simply having the existence of people, together.

Carolee has been labeled a feminist pioneer artist because she had fought to put women at the forefront of something they have historically been removed from. I think that Carolee is much more than that label. I think that she is a revolutionary artist who pushes limits and boundaries with her subjects and her chosen mediums. I think our society as a whole was and continues to be uncomfortable with the rawness and the explicit nature of sex, sexuality and gender and it is because of artists like Carolee Schneemann that we can see a world beyond that we currently have today.

EYE BODY: 36 TRANDFORMATIVE ACTIONS (1963)