Carolee Schneemann. Kinetic Painting

This comprehensive retrospective of the work of the influential artist, choreographer, performer, and writer Carolee Schneemann (1939 Fox Chase, PA–2019 New Paltz, NY, US) was first presented at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg before it traveled to Frankfurt and New York. Around 350 works spanning six decades spread across two floors and on 18,300 square feet of exhibition space at the museum’s Mönchsberg building. The exhibition illuminated a genealogy of new forms of art that emerged as painting set in motion and eventually evolved into expansive installations in multiple media.

The grand exhibition opened with Schneemann’s early landscapes and portraits from the mid-1950s. The artist soon started setting her paintings in motion using simple mechanisms and integrating photographs and everyday objects into her pictures. The exhibition featured numerous examples of this genre that have rarely or never been on public display. Aiming to take painting beyond the canvas and be “both image and image-maker,” the artist also employed media such as performance, photography, and film.

Many of Schneemann’s works and texts focus on the female body in its social and historical contexts and explore eroticism and sexual pleasure from a female perspective. Key works in this connection included the film Fuses (1965), for which she manipulated the exposed film stock with paint, fire, acid, and pasted footage together in a sort of collage, and the legendary performance Interior Scroll (1975). In a critical look back on the paintings of the abstract expressionists, she developed Up to and Including Her Limits (1973–1977), a performance installation that highlights the artist’s body as a medium of artistic mark-making. The exhibition also featured recent works that demonstrate that Schneemann’s creative energy remains undiminished.

The retrospective focused on both canonic pieces and performances, and previously unpublished and rarely seen works that showcase lesser-known aspects of Schneemann’s prolific output. Based on a thorough scholarly review, it presented her oeuvre in unprecedented breadth and depth, embedding it in the context of painting and encouraging a wider audience to explore her art. Exhibition and catalog have been organized during in collaboration with the artist, still alive at this time.