As a pioneer of performance art, Carolee Schneemann (* 1939), who was awarded the Golden Lion for her life's work at the Venice Biennale this year, has gone down in the history of art. Her works on gender roles, sexuality and the use of the body in art are of seminal influence on subsequent generations of artists.
In an exhibition, the MMK presents Schneemann's famous works and performances together with rarely shown works, bringing new facets of her artistic work into focus. Beginning with Schneemann's early landscape and portrait paintings from the mid-1950s, which evolve into object-like "painting-constructions", the role of painting is explored in relation to her performances, choreographies and experimental film works.
Schneemann began early on to set her paintings in motion with simple mechanisms - forcing a kinetic painting - and to incorporate photographs and objects from her everyday life into works for which she coined the term "Painting Constructions". In 1961, the artist moved to New York and became part of the avant-garde developments of the downtown art scene in film, dance, happenings, and events. The desire to take painting beyond the canvas and to be both creator and performer of her images led to a hybrid form of performance and photography in which she significantly incorporated her body. The artist's exploration of the female body in historical and social contexts, as well as of desire and eroticism, is evident in numerous works.
The exhibition was curated by Sabine Breitwieser, Director of the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, in cooperation with the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main, and will go on view at MoMA PS1 in New York (from 22. October 2017).
Some of the works in the exhibition "Carolee Schneemann" might irritate children and young people or offend their moral sensibilities.
Text source and further information about this event: http://mmk-frankfurt.en/en/nc/exhibitions/exhibition-details/article/carolee_schneemann_kinetic_painting/
