Tag Archives: American art

RIP Carolee Schneemann (1939 – 2019)

Carolee Schneemann was an American artist who flourished in the 1960s and 1970s with her “body art”

Her best-known piece is Interior Scroll (1975), a performance in which she produced a scroll from her vagina while standing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB-OMgol-YE

Her films include Fuses (1967) in which Schneemann and her then-boyfriend James Tenney are having sex, a reaction to Stan Brakhage’s Window Water Baby Moving (1959) which shows Brakhage’s wife giving birth.

Above are fragments of Fuses set to an educative narration made as a school or university assignment.

RIP Chris Burden (1946-2015)

Chris Burden (April 11, 1946 – May 10, 2015) was an American artist working in performance, sculpture, and installation art.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE5u3ThYyl4

Video: Shoot (1971), in which Burden was shot by a rifle in his left arm by an assistant from a distance of about five meters, an early example of body art.

His later work is less harsh.

Appearing and disappearing

It’s funny how Venus Rising from the Sea — A Deception (c. 1822, above) by American painter Raphaelle Peale relates to the Veil of Veronica by Francisco de Zurbarán of the previous post.[1]

The Veil of Veronica is about appearing (the face of Jesus in a handkerchief), the Venus deception about hiding and disappearing (Venus hiding from sight).