The female body in conflict. United States and European feminist performance art, 1963--1979: Carolee Schneemann, Valie Export, and Ulrike Rosenbach.

摘要

This dissertation examines the work of Carolee Schneemann, Valie Export, and Ulrike Rosenbach as case studies in a cross-cultural examination of feminist performance art of the late 1960s and 1970s. It explores the second wave women's movements in the United States, Austria, and Germany to contextualize the development of each artist's work. To facilitate such an examination, selected works are analyzed in four thematic areas: personal experiences, beauty and the (nude) female body, female sexuality, and myth and ritual. These topics emerged as dominant concerns in feminist performance art in the late 1960s and 1970s. The aim of this study, then, is to understand the development of these topics in early feminist performance art, to undertake the first international study on feminist performance art, and to provide detailed analyses of selected work by three significant practitioners in this medium.;Each of these artists chose the medium of performance art in which to use their own bodies to challenge patriarchal definitions of women in their respective societies. Schneemann, Export, and Rosenbach developed new visual territory in which women could address their lives, question their identities, and look to the female body for inspiration. The artists presented images of women that conflicted with social norms for women's bodies and with accepted standards of female behavior. The female body was, and continues to be, contested ground and these artists challenged traditional social, cultural, and historical assumptions about women through their work.;Due to the conflicts surrounding the use of the female body in cultural production, much of the work by Schneemann, Export, and Rosenbach has been insufficiently analyzed. In the dominant discourses of post-World War Two art, this important body of work has been neglected. Moreover, essentialist labeling has minimized the scholarly attention received by feminist performance art of the 1960s and 1970s. Therefore, it is the aim of this dissertation, through the chosen examples of work by Schneemann, Export, and Rosenbach to increase the knowledge of their work, of feminist performance art, of significant themes in feminist performance, and of feminism in the United States, Austria, and Germany.