#performance scripts

Author’s note: This post was written before the passing of Carolee Schneemann. So just want to reiterate her impact, her work was vital and radical and important to so many. Thank you for everything, Carolee Schneemann.

As we wrap up the first week of March we are also entering the final month of our show Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection. The exhibit features several items from from the library’s artists’ book collection including one by Carolee Schneemann called Video Burn. Organized in a calendar-like structure, it features drawings over television static and images of the female body.

Through her career Schneeman has worked extensively with video and analog film both alone, and incorporated into her “happenings” and performance art pieces. Her work Up to and Including Her Limits, featured super 8 double reels projecting continuously as the artist suspended herself from a tree surgeon’s harness, drawing as she swayed and moved around the space. The video footage included “Kitch’s Last Meal,” Schneeman’s 18 year old cat eating, and videotapes of previous iterations of this project. In our collection we have a thorough description of how to create this piece in a booklet that contains descriptions, diagrams, artist explanations, conversations with curator Daryl Chin, and printed reviews of the installation-performance.

Our collection also has Cézanne She Was a Great Painter, from January 1975. This book, compiled by Schneeman, contains her writings from the 1960s and 1970s: letters, notebook fragments, and performance scripts. Schneeman also includes autobiographical and manifesto-like pieces describing her attraction to painting, even as a child:

“I decided a painter named ‘Cézanne’ would be my mascot; I would assume Cézanne was unquestionably a woman—after all the “anne” in it was feminine. Were the bathers I studied in reproduction so awkward because painted by a woman? But “she” was famous and respected. If Cézanne could do it, I could do it.”

If you are interested in viewing these or any other materials, the libraries are open for research by anyone, so we encourage you to schedule an appointment.