[-empyre-] Carolee Schneeman

[Constanza Salazar]

Firstly, thank you to Renate and Tim for inviting me to participate in the
April Discussion on empyre soft skinned place. I wanted to discuss my
impressions of Carolee Schneemann’s works and the impact it had in me when
I was an undergrad studying art history.

I remember sitting in class learning the great male American artists that
encompassed much of modern art and abstract expressionism. I remember
asking, where are the female artists? Are there *any *female artists
working around this time, and if so, why aren’t we learning about them. It
seemed to be at the time that there was an enormous jump or omission in the
art historical timeline. We learned about the *great* influence of Willem
de Kooning, of Lichtenstein, of Pollock, of Warhol—the male artists bound
by the medium, by its materiality, by their fame and influence in the art
world. However, *eccentric abstraction*, for instance, made popular by the
likes of Louise Bourgeois and Eva Hesse to name a few, were hardly
discussed, and if they were, they were discussed mainly from the
generalized art historical category of feminist art. Granted, they are and
were feminist artists creating feminist art at the time when what reigned
was the erratic and aggressive strokes by the male artists or the cold
minimalist lines of male artists. But for me, it was in the role that the
body played within the works by feminist artists that made an impact on me.
It was the return to the body, as an object, a material thing, a corporeal
and phenomenological thing in the world that inspired a true awakening in
thinking intellectually about the role of women throughout art history.

Schneemann’s work was especially visceral. In conversation with action
painting, and ab-ex painting, what does she do? She reinforces the role of
the body with the “brushstroke” of the paint or medium. However, she should
not be seen as the direct counter-part to male artists, because that would
imply that she, and other artists like her are always understood in
comparison to male artists, rather than appreciated in their own right.
Instead, her works like those works by pioneering female artists stand as
markers in history for the return of the body—*the return of the female
body—*the body that was lost, so to speak, and was then reincorporated,
reinvestigated, and renewed within art of the latter half of the
century. *Happenings,
*allowed her the opportunity to organize *A Journey Through a Disrupted
Landscape *which had individuals crawl through different surfaces, textures
and landscapes, encouraging a visceral and full-bodied experience.  The
work that really blew me away as an undergrad, was, of course, her *Interior
Scroll *(1975). The unravelling of the scroll from her vagina, as a form of
art was unspeakable to me, it was unlike anything I had ever seen as a
student. And yet…because I was studying philosophy, and specifically,
Merleau-Ponty  (“flesh of the world”), I was amazed and in utter awe of
that performance. Knowing now that she wanted to ask the question, through
her performances, about whether a “nude woman could be both image and image
maker,” I continue to ask that today in the works of art by all artists.
How does her body become material? Become an image? How does her body
vacillate between the object and subject dichotomy, like Merleau-Ponty
describes in his text on *The Visible and the Invisible*? In her *Eye Body:
36 Transformative Actions* (1963), how does her body become an object among
other objects? How does this ecology of things interrelate with one another?

Thinking about Schneemann and her work surfaces many emotions and ideas,
and possibilities, especially philosophical ones about what a body is and
what it could be. I feel indebted to her for her bravery, her audacity, and
her vision for thinking through these things during the time that she did.
But I ask you all to also reflect on these critical and philosophical
matters:

What is a body? What can a body do? How is a body rendered an object? And,
how does this “object” have agency? How do we place/position these
wonderful female artists we are celebrating these weeks within these
notions and as female artists in an art history that still celebrates male
artists?



Thanks!

-- 

*Constanza Salazar*

Ph.D. Student

Department of the History of Art and Visual Studies

GM08 Goldwin Smith Hall

Cornell University

Ithaca, NY 14853

cs2293 at cornell.edu
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