Carolee Schneemann (b. 1939, Philadelphia, PA; d. 2019, New Paltz, NY) activated the female nude with a multidisciplinary practice that spanned sixty years and included painting, assemblage, performance, and film. Her paintings form the 1950s and 60s initially harnessed the lineage of Modernism and Abstract Expressionism, but quickly transitioned into painting-constructions, kinetic sculptures, films and performances. In 1993, Schneemann declared, “I’m a painter. I’m still a painter and I will die a painter. Everything that I have developed has to do with extending visual principles off the canvas.” "Personae: JT and Three Kitch's", 1957, uses confident brushstrokes and rich polychrome to depict the nude male form of her then-partner and frequent collaborator James Tenney. This work is suspected to be the cause of her expulsion from Bard for ‘moral turpitude’. Schneemann’s ensuing career was plagued with censorship, which both stymied and stimulated her explorations of patriarchal conventions and desire to evidence a deep history of female iconography. Schneemann has exhibited worldwide, at institutions including the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art and The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Modern, London; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and The Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid. The comprehensive retrospective "Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Paintings" recently traveled from Museum der Moderne, Salzburg (2015), to the Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (2017) and MoMA PS1, New York (2018).
