Multidisciplinary artist Charlotte Moorman’s experimental cello performances and avant-garde festival curation shaped New York City’s cultural underground in the latter half of the 20th century. Moorman died of cancer in 1991, and for the last 25 years her legacy has been felt largely as a footnote to the histories of her better-known collaborators: John Cage, Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono. But now the Block Museum of Art has opened a retrospective exhibition this month on Moorman’s legacy of performance and provocation. “A Feast of Astonishments” presents artifacts from her work and ephemera from her life for the first time, honoring a figure whose fearless and playful gestures refused to fit neatly into the canons of any discipline.
Moorman never saw herself as a muse, though many would apply the word to her role in Paik’s performance scores. She insisted on her agency, no matter her collaborators; once Paik wrote a script, she was free to actualize it however she wished—the art lived through her. She would often perform in the nude—cellos made of ice she would play down to water, cellos made of Plexiglas and televisions she would play by waving magnets near the screens. Moorman bowed her (wooden) instrument in Paik’s iconic TV Bra for Living Sculpture, a pair of miniature televisions affixed to a clear plastic harness. Paik described the work as a “living sculpture,” but Moorman would subdivide it into three equally living components: the bra, herself, and her cello.
Through 7/17 Northwestern University Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Dr., Evanston 847-491-4000 blockmuseum.northwestern.edu Free
