2018.4
Parallel Axis
Artist
Carolee Schneemann
(Fox Chase, Pennsylvania, 10/12/1939 - )
Title
Parallel Axis
Creation Date
1973
Century
mid-20th century
Dimensions
30 x 45 in. (76.2 x 114.3 cm)
Object Type
collage
Creation Place
North America, United States
Medium and Support
gelatin silver prints collaged on museum board
Credit Line
Museum Purchase, Lloyd O. and Marjorie Strong Coulter Fund
Copyright
This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s
Copyright Terms and Conditions.
Accession Number
2018.4
Since the 1960s Carolee Schneemann has challenged viewers to consider and value a woman’s experience and expression. In this photograph, Carolee Schneemann’s nude body arches across train tracks that recede through a bucolic landscape. Mounted in a grid, four prints from the negative form a continuous diamond-shaped pattern, suggesting a dialectic of one-point perspective and ornament, of the supple body and the engineered steel. Already in 1973 Schneemann used the image in many different configurations, formats, and media. It is excerpted from a series from 1973 that also included a sheet of photocopied photographs from a Fluxus happening in the train from London to Edinburgh in which Schneemann performed Isis Strip, an attempt to cross the whole length of the train on roller skates, naked. Schneemann again revisited the photograph in 2009, when she editioned it with publisher Carolina Nitsch.
Object Description
Four gelatin silver prints collaged on museum board