In 1962 I began a loft environment built of large panels interlocked by rhythmic color units, broken mirrors and glass, lights, moving umbrellas and motorized parts. I worked with my whole body—the scale of the panels incorporating my own physical scale. I then decided I wanted my actual body to be combined with the work as an integral material—a further dimension of the construction.

In December of '63 I was encouraged by my friend Erró (the Icelandic, Paris-based painter) when I told him I wanted to do a series based on physical transformation of my body in my work—the constructions and wall environment. I considered that the ritual aspect of the process might put me in a trance-like state, which would heighten the submission of self into materials.

Covered in paint, grease, chalk, ropes, plastic, I established my body as visual territory. Not only am I an image maker, but I explore the image values of flesh as material I choose to work with. The body may remain erotic, sexual, desired, desiring and yet still be votive—marked and written over in a text of stroke and gesture discovered by my creative female will.

I wrote “my creative female will” because for years my most audacious works were viewed as if someone else inhabiting me had created them. They were considered “masculine” owing to their aggression and boldness, as if I were inhabited by a stray male principle. An interesting possibility, except in the early sixties this notion was used to blot out, denigrate, deflect the coherence, necessity and personal integrity of what I made and how it was made.

Using my body as an extension of my painting-constructions challenged and threatened the psychic territorial power lines by which women, in 1963, were admitted to the Art Stud Club, so long as they behaved enough like the men, did work clearly in the traditions and pathways hacked out by the men. (The only artist I know of making body art before this time was Yoko Ono.)

The nude was being used in early Happenings as an object (often an “active” object). I was using the nude as myself—the artist—and as a primal, archaic force which could unify energies I discovered as visual information. I felt compelled to “conceive” of my body in manifold aspects which had eluded the culture around me. Eight years later the implications of the body images I had explored would be clarified when studying sacred Earth Goddess artifacts of 4,000 years ago.

Carolee Schneemann, Imaging Her Erotics. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachussetts, London, England, 2002.

Eye Body, 1963. Studio-loft environment approximately 36 x 40 x 10 feet containing painting-constructions (Four Fur Cutting Boards, Gift Science, Music Box Music, Ice Box, December Re-Membered, Maximus at Gloucester, Fire Lights, Colorado House), works-in-progress, collage materials including motorized umbrellas, piles of fur, paint, shattered glass, transparent plastic, cow skull, plaster-covered dress form, and assorted detritus and tools.

Installations:

Mink Paws Terret. Artist's Studio, NYC 1963.
Out of Actions: Between Performance And The Object, 1949-1979. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1999; Museau d'Art Contemporani, Barcelona. 15 October, 1998- 6 January 1999; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. 8 February- 25 April, 1999.

Artwork Selected Works by Carolee Schneemann

Artwork
Selected Works by Carolee Schneemann