$12,000
Estimate: $3,000 - $5,000
Auction: May 8, 2019 1:00:00 PM EDT
Signed and dated 7/60 top right, signed again on the stretcher bar verso, oil with mixed media collage on canvas.
22 5/8 x 43 3/4 in. (57.5 x 111.1cm)
Provenance: The Artist.
Rochelle Owens & George Economou, Wellfleet, Massachusetts (gifted directly from the above).
Throughout the course of her career, groundbreaking multidisciplinary artist Carolee Schneemann explored a variety of media as vehicles to confront and redefine controversial societal taboos concerning subjects such as femininity, gender, morality and sexuality. Though perhaps best known for her provocative performance art, Schneemann always identified herself first and foremost as a painter. Said the artist in 1993, '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.' Yet her initial foray in the 1960s into the male-dominated medium caused therealization that 'the brush belonged to abstract expressionist male endeavor. The brush was phallic.' Though she never gave up painting, this experience spurred her exploration into other media such as film, dance, theater and performance, which allowed her to position her own body within her work and perform the roles of 'both image and image-maker.' The present lots are rare examples from the early phase of her artistic career, similar examples of which were exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art's retrospective exhibition 'Kinetic Painting' last year.
1. The Artist as quoted in: 'Carolee Schneemann,' Art in America, November 3, 2016.
2. The Artist as quoted in: Glenn Harper, ed., Interventions and Provocations: Conversations on Art, Culture, and Resistance, New York: State University of New York Press, 1998, p. 206.