Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • The Guardian

    Snakes, scrolls, swinging from chandeliers: how Carolee Schneemann transformed art

    Sep 06, 2022 6 minutes

    Carolee Schneemann was born in 1939 in Pennsylvania, USA. Her father, a doctor, gave her an early introduction to the body and its viscera. She received a scholarship to Bard College at 16 and left to study in New York, ending up at Columbia. “I had never found a precedent of woman artists in the art history books that were available to me,” Schneemann said in 2017.

    Schneemann worked for many years honing her multimedia practice. This included performances, film, photography and painting, exemplified by the 1963 photo series Eye Body: 36 Transformative Actions for the Camera, in which she photographed herself naked and covered in paint, glue, fur, snakes and feathers, at once the seer and the seen.

    Despite a comprehensive body of work and writing, gallery representation and recognition eluded Schneemann for much of her life. Still, she never stopped creating, ever-engaged in the political, challenging the limits of the physical body and the, the first UK survey of Schneemann’s work, opens at the Barbican in London. Below, novelist remembers her friendship with the artist.

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from The Guardian

    The Guardian4 min read
    ‘Everyone Owns At Least One Pair’: $75bn Sneaker Industry Unboxed In Gold Coast Exhibition
    What was the world’s first sneaker? Was it made in the 1830s, when the UK’s Liverpool Rubber Company fused canvas tops to rubber soles, creating beach footwear for the Victorian middle class? Or was it a few decades later, about 1870, with the invent
    The Guardian4 min read
    Lawn And Order: The Evergreen Appeal Of Grass-cutting In Video Games
    Jessica used to come for tea on Tuesdays, and all she wanted to do was cut grass. Every week, we’d click The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker’s miniature disc into my GameCube and she’d ready her sword. Because she was a couple of years younger than m
    The Guardian4 min read
    ‘Almost Like Election Night’: Behind The Scenes Of Spotify Wrapped
    There’s a flurry of activities inside Spotify’s New York City’s offices in the Financial District. “It’s almost like election night,” Louisa Ferguson, Spotify’s global head of marketing experience says, referring to a bustling newsroom. At the same t

    Related