Carolee Schneemann (1939–2019)

Double Trouble : Carolee Schneemann and Sands Murray-Wassink

By Kathleen Wentrack

IT Press, and a selection of her letters (edited by Kristine Stiles) for John Hopkins University Press.

Text from the catalog for the exhibition, Double Trouble: Carolee Schneemann and Sands Murray-Wassink. One exhibit in two locations: Rotterdam and Amsterdam, Holland at Cokkie Snoei Gallery, November 18 - December 22, 2001

« I pay attention to the direction of unconscious information. There has always been something irrepressible in my work. I believe in the pure thrust of intuition, trust of the body. Putting my body in a central position in my art reveals contradictions in our culture. I resist social, erotic and aesthetic restraints, and have opened my energies to finding materials and forms which celebrate and transcend predicted directions of the work. »

Carolee Schneemann1



« My work is intimate in my eyes and mind, and dependent on my context, specific person, environment and lived experience…it is primarily made to add where I feel things are missing in the gay male mind of America, and to critique, comment, and touch on those things I feel particularly taboo and painful in the U.S. mental landscape. »

Sands Murray-Wassink2



The work of Carolee Schneemann is empowering and liberating, particularly for the artist Sands Murray-Wassink. Both artists confront issues of a personal and sexual nature, including Western cultural taboos surrounding sex and sexual orientation, especially in the United States. Schneemann dismantles taboos integrated into society's structure and psyche, principally those pertaining to women and how women's bodies "should" be contained and controlled. A feminist before the advent of feminism in the 1970s, she broke ground in the areas of painting, performance, film and video. Her work has been a starting point for many artists including Murray-Wassink who acknowledges her influence and that of feminism in his work. A gay, American artist based in Amsterdam, he questions the role of the artist, how one is "supposed" to act and interact with his/her environment while undermining taboos surrounding the gay, male body and its sexuality.

Double Troublejuxtaposes the work of two seemingly disparate artists co-existing at the beginning of the twenty-first century-the connection, Murray-Wassink's faithful appreciation of and inspiration from Schneemann and a friendship that developed over the last several years. Murray-Wassink met Schneemann in 1994 as a student in her sculpture class at Pratt Institute in New York City. Both grew up in America, Murray-Wassink in Midwestern Kansas and Schneemann in rural Pennsylvania. Both have made significant ventures outside the United States, to live and produce their work. Schneemann spent four years in England in the early 1970s. The work in this exhibition dates from the late 1970s and the early 1980s when she periodically visited The Netherlands to create and perform work in Amsterdam, Arnhem and Middelburg. Now at the beginning of his career, Murray-Wassink's production dates from almost 20 years later. Art historians have noted the general connections between the 70s and the 90s particularly among feminist artists; this exhibition takes a closer look at selected works by two such connected artists.3 Both artists share a living through the body, making art based on their physical, emotional and intellectual experiences in which they explore issues of subjectivity, beauty, sexuality and pleasure. Some viewers of Schneemann and Murray-Wassink's work may find themselves troubled by what they see, here, it is doubled.

Trained as a painter in the late 1950s, Schneemann's early paintings and constructions exhibit a tactile, physical quality, and include boxes with mirrors, lights and moving parts. By the early 1960s she moved to New York City playing an integral part in the avant-garde scene, working with dance and Happenings which she refers to as Kinetic Theater. Crossing boundaries between media, she has always considered herself a painter:

« Environments, happenings ---concretions--- are an extension of my painting - constructions which often have moving (motorized) sections. The essential difference between concretions and painting-constructions involves the materials used and their function as "scale," both physical and psychological. »4

Eye/Body - Thirty-Six Transformative Actions for Camera (1963) is a photograph series based on an early private performance work in which the artist incorporates her body into that of a painting construction, "covered in paint, grease, chalk, ropes, plastic, I establish my body as a visual territory."5 In Meat Joy (1964), Schneemann transforms her painting into three dimensions with performers moving on stage akin to strokes of paint on canvas - painting/marking the space with the body. Fuses (1967) represents a move into film, part of her Autobiographical Trilogy which includes Plumb Line (1971) and Kitch's Last Meal (1978). Interior Scroll (1975) and Up to and Including Her Limits (1976) place her work in pivotal discussions of feminist art in the 1970s. In the 1980s, Schneemann crossed different taboo lines with Infinity Kisses (1982-86), a series of photographs documenting tender kisses with her cat. Other pieces address personal loss such as Hand/Heart for Ana Mendieta(1986) and Mortal Coils(1994), a memorial to recently deceased friends. Many works since 1990 form larger mixed media installations, such as More Wrong Things (2001), a group of video monitors precariously suspended from the ceiling or positioned on the ground surrounded by wires and cords in an eerily lit space. The monitors present montages of her performances intermixed with clips of military and human trauma; the viewer is afraid to make a wrong step and add to the mayhem.6 In Schneemann's work, it is often difficult to see where life ends and art begins.

Murray-Wassink is drawn to Schneemann's unique work not only in its incorporation of diverse materials and techniques but also its expressiveness of the body. Born in Topeka, Kansas in 1974, Murray-Wassink grew up in a suppressive environment that refused to acknowledge his homosexuality and denied his physical being, an experience that profoundly affects his art. After attending Pratt Institute in New York (1992-1994), he continued his education in Amsterdam at the Rietveld Academy (1994) and the Ateliers program (1995-1996). Murray-Wassink works in a variety of media, from painting and installation to photography based body art and performance. The performance project, Sands Murray Meets Dianne Brill (1998), charts his developing friendship with the model and author.7 For the last few years, the artist has combined text with painting and photographs, the text reveals messages integral to the work as in Psychological Profile: My Gay Self (1999/2000) and Make a Wonderful (Gay) World: Neurosis (2000).

Other work tangentially relates to the readymade, such as Me/Clitoris/Dildo (2000) and Gay Emancipation/Revolution Hearts (2000), a series of seven variously sized clear, plastic, heart-shaped boxes covered with slogans of homosexual emancipation.

Murray-Wassink's most recent shows in Holland include a performance-based work Sands Murray's Personal Artistic Businessin 1997 at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam and the Sands Murray Project, a 1998 performance aimed at confronting and exposing the workings of the Dutch art market.8 Murray-Wassink's work often speaks to a homosexual audience, stating: "I intend it to be subversive and affirmative at the same time."9 The artist's main interests lie in art produced by the 1970s generation of feminists such as Schneemann, Hannah Wilke, Howardena Pindell, Adrian Piper and Harmony Hammond.10 Gay male artists of many generations have also been influential, particularly Tim Miller, Moshekwa Langa, Jim Clark and Forrest Bess. Like Schneemann, Murray-Wassink is very willing to acknowledge his process as an individual and artist and where these intersect. They share an artistic approach in which their life is their art and their art is their life.… (mere)