Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Carolee Schneeman did fierce painting with lots of strength and action on the surface of the painting. She made constructions, 3-D and textured. She did performance art--videos where sometimes she wasn't wearing clothes.

Those last four words, not wearing clothes, are remembered more than some other stuff. I found a book of her art which has exactly one picture of her not wearing any clothes. I noticed she looked really strong as well as having in more conventional ways a great body. The great body, beautiful breats, for example. thing has not always for women been associated with physical strength. When she was making her performance videos was before very many women exercised much.

To leaf through this book and see that all her art is strong, the oils, the collages, her body, makes me know I can be stronger though right now I may not know all the ways.

The book is "Carolee Schleemann I. Early Work 1960/1970 II. Carolee Schleemann Recent Work" published by Max Hutchinson Gallery/Documentext in 1983 and 1984. It looks like it was originally two books, but in the version I have its one. There's a quote from Schleemann in it that goes like this--the ellipsis [. . .]is the way it is in the book:

"From childhood--without any break--I felt myself a part of nature, saw the world as animate, expressive, alive and sometimes responsive to my own desires; but always the natural world was intoxicating. . . .The sense of my own physical life and of making things within that were united." --Carolee Schleemann

There are more ways of being strong and more people being strong than have sometimes been noticed.