Standing alone and often naked, Carolee Schneemann has for the past forty years embodied what Lucy Lippard calls a 'mythological revolution.' Her mythic heroine is the 'eye body': the perceiving organism, simultaneously subject and object, which in itself becomes the refracting mirror of all history and political struggle, nature and culture, biology and religion, art and language. Imaging Her Erotics chronicles, through words and pictures, this artist's attempts to inscribe her own 'eye body' into the materials of painting and sculpture, photography and film, installation works and performances: her rapturous and remarkable quest to fuse with both the shamanic roots of civilization and the physical spaces of contemporary art.
Shelly Rice, author of Parisian Views and editor of Inverted Odysseys: Maya Deren, Claude Cahun, Cindy Sherman
From the perspective of today's art world, it is difficult to grasp the extraordinary bravery and daring of Carolee Schneeman.
Publishers Weekly
Schneemann's work is founded on a penetrating intellect. Schneemann's is an erotics of pleasure, pain, and knowledge.
Bookforum
Carolee Schneemann's legendary early film Fuses undertook to discover whether showing how sexual love looked corresponded to how it felt. But even the art world is organized into systems of resistance against 'imaging her erotics,' and her subsequent art has largely been dedicated to overcoming them. She has done this with humor, courage, tireless imagination, love, smarts, wisdom, goodness—and an amazing cheerfulness. I cherish this book as a portrait of the artist as woman warrior fighting on behalf of us all. When art is free, everyone is freed.
Arthur C. Danto, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Columbia University, and Art Critic, The Nation
Schneeman's...work is finally accorded the comprehensive attention it deserves...stimulating and well-designed
Booklist
When I need to be reminded of art's sacredness, dignity, and necessity, I turn to the inspiring example of Carolee Schneemann's work. This volume gives beautiful testimony to the range and complexity of her achievement.
Wayne Koestenbaum, Professor of English, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and author of Cleavage: Essays on Sex, Stars, and Aesthetics
A seminal figure in 20th century art, Carolee Schneemann has produced a body of work that is as capacious as the time it grew up in. Her work is startling, smart, immediate, sensual, and thoughtful. Schneemann's films – especially, for me, the magnificent two-screen 'Kitch's Last Meal' – are, in the best sense, loving experiments in moving pictures. Her performances, like 'Up To and Including Her Limits,' make the living body signify as form and place. Schneemann's writing is delightful, witty, and breathlessly articulate. This new collection is vitally important to understanding Carolee Schneemann's significant and singular contributions to contemporary practices.
Lynne Tillman, author of No Lease on Life and The Broad Picture
Carolee Schneemann is the winner of the Jimmy Ernst Award in Art presented by The American Academy of Arts and Letters. The $5000 prize is given to a “painter or sculptor whose lifetime contribution to his or her vision has been both consistent and dedica
