Announcing representation of Carolee Schneemann Foundation

31 October 2024

Lisson Gallery is proud to announce representation of the Carolee Schneemann Foundation in collaboration with P·P·O·W, New York. Carolee Schneemann (1939–2019), one of the most provocative and inspiring artists of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, created work over six decades across various artistic media: experimental painting, sculptural assemblages and kinetic works, performance in which she used her own body as a medium, lyrical films and immersive multi-media installations. Schneemann remains an important source of reference for contemporary artists today, as her works addressed urgent topics from sexual expression and the objectification of women, to political narratives and the suffering of war. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum der Moderne Salzburg in Salzburg and the Barbican in London, which presented Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics in 2022–2023, the first major survey of Schneemann’s work in the UK.

Lisson Gallery previously exhibited Schneemann’s work in 'Controlled Burnings: Hiller, Latham, Schneemann', New York, 2023, titled after a series of box constructions in which Schneemann used fire as a transformative material. Lisson will represent Schneemann globally, and the gallery’s first solo exhibition of Schneemann’s work will open in Los Angeles in Spring 2025, the artist’s first solo show in the city. The Carolee Schneemann Foundation will soft launch a residency program in the summer of 2025 at Schneemann’s home in upstate New York to support artists and writers who share her commitment to aesthetic experimentation. This news also follows the continuing partnership between the Carolee Schneemann Foundation and Stanford University Libraries which recently announced the digitization of six decades of the artist’s diaries; released in three rounds, Schneemann’s 1951–1978 diaries are now available on the libraries’ website.

Having begun her career as an Abstract Expressionist painter, Schneemann was disillusioned by the strict hierarchy and male-dominated painting scene in New York at the time and quickly moved beyond the canvas. She expanded her artistic vision to the expressive possibilities of film, performance, photography and installation, exploring taboo subjects and challenging oppressive mainstream social and aesthetic conventions, but maintained, “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.” In her early kinetic painting, Aria Duetto: Pin Wheel (1957), Schneemann invited viewers to activate the canvas by spinning it and viewing the surface in motion. Early sculptures, such as Colorado House (1962), Four Fur Cutting Boards (1962–63) and Controlled Burnings (1962–64), similarly bridged connections between performance and painting.

Later, Schneemann became known for her legendary, visceral and controversial performances, including the ‘kinetic theatre’ staging of Meat Joy (1964), a performance with eight performers that the artist described as having “the character of an erotic rite: excessive, indulgent; a celebration of flesh as material: raw fish, chickens, sausages, wet paint, transparent plastic, rope, brushes, paper scrap.” In the early durational performance, Up To and Including Her Limits (1973–76), she suspended herself from the ceiling, raising and lowering her body to create a web of marks on the surrounding walls and floor as a direct response to the masculine legacy of “action painting.” Interior Scroll, now considered a fundamental feminist performance piece, was performed in 1975 and 1977; in this piece, Schneemann stood naked on a table in front of the audience, ritualistically painted her body in dark mud and (after reciting from her book, Cezanne, She Was a Great Painter) extracted a scroll from her vagina, reading its manifesto-like text. Schneemann’s interest in the relationship between knowledge, power and the body also inspired her political activism, campaigning in anti-war protests and creating multimedia installations and films such as Viet Flakes (1965), Souvenir of Lebanon (1983–2006) and Terminal Velocity (2001) that investigated the atrocities of the Vietnam War, the Lebanese Civil War and the September 11 attacks. Schneemann provided a counternarrative of these conflicts, highlighting in particular the contribution of imagery in shaping our understanding and empathy toward others. As she explained in 1977, “[my art] has to do with a desperate desire to capture the passionate things of life. Those could be very small things, very big. It can be war, it can be love, a cat whisker.”

Schneemann received her BA from Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY and an MFA from the University of Illinois, Urbana, IL. Additional selected solo exhibitions include Kinetic Painting, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Salzburg, 2016, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany, 2017 and MoMA P.S.1, 2018; Carolee Schneemann: Then and Now, MUSAC (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Léon), Léon, Spain, 2014, Musee Departemental d’art Contemporain, Rochechouart, France, 2014; Carolee Schneemann: Precarious, Sammlung Friedrichshof Gallery, Vienna, Austria, 2013; Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, Rochechouart, France, 2014; Carolee Schneemann: Within and Beyond the Premises, Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, SUNY, New Paltz, NY, 2010; Carolee Schneemann: Painting What it Became, P·P·O·W, New York, NY, 2009. In 2017, she was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 57th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy. Carolee Schneemann’s work is currently and upcoming on view in Extreme Tension: Art between Politics and Society 1945 until 2000 at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (October 22, 2023 – October 31, 2025); Love Is Louder at BOZAR (October 12, 2024 – January 5, 2025); Female Artists in Expressionism and Fluxus at Museum Ostwall, Dortmund, Germany (October 25, 2024 – March 23, 2025); Underground: American Avant-Garde Film of the 1960s at the Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam (October 13 – January 5, 2025); The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970–2020 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA) (November 9, 2024 – April 13, 2025, curated by Jamillah James); and in Women’s Studio Workshop 50th Anniversary Exhibition at Bainbridge Island Museum (July 2024), Women’s Studio Workshop (Summer 2025), Minnesota Center for the Book (August – October 2025) and the National Museum of Women in the Arts (November 2025).

Alex Logsdail, CEO of Lisson Gallery:
It’s thrilling to be announcing the representation of such an important artistic figure. There are many longstanding connections between Schneemann and Lisson that we will explore into the future, and as such it feels a very natural fit. I was deeply struck by the show at the Barbican, which for me entirely recontextualized her work, and highlighted the role of painting in her expansive, experimental oeuvre. For such a radical figure, being rooted in something so elemental only reinforced her importance.

Rachel Churner, Director of the Carolee Schneemann Foundation:
We are honored to be working with Lisson Gallery. Their almost-60-year history of rigorous programming and their international scope will enable us to amplify the reach of Schneemann's radical experiments in painting, film, and performance and share her artworks with broader audiences around the world.

Sara Vance Waddell, Board President of the Carolee Schneemann Foundation:
For an artist-endowed foundation, this is an ideal collaboration, allowing us to maintain the longstanding relationship with P·P·O·W while opening exciting new opportunities and perspectives through Lisson Gallery.

Read more on the announcement in the Financial Times.

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