{"id":31865,"date":"2016-02-24T11:08:58","date_gmt":"2016-02-24T17:08:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=31865"},"modified":"2016-02-27T10:58:31","modified_gmt":"2016-02-27T16:58:31","slug":"charlotte-moorman-shattering-barriers-between-art-and-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/charlotte-moorman-shattering-barriers-between-art-and-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlotte Moorman: Shattering barriers between art and technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Elizabeth Bacharach<\/strong><\/p>\n

Can a television and a topless cellist wearing a pair of them be art?<\/p>\n

To Charlotte Moorman\u2014the Julliard-trained cellist commonly known as the \u201ctopless cellist\u201d\u2014 a television is art.<\/p>\n

This is evident in the first major Moorman exhibition. \u201cA Feast of Astonishments,\u201d open through July 17 at Northwestern University\u2019s Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art. The exhibit explores the cellist\u2019s legacy and vision through a multimedia immersion.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Charlotte
Charlotte Moorman performs wearing artist Nam June Paik\u2019s “TV Cello” and “TV Glasses,” New York, 1971.. Niam June Paik (American, born in Korea, 1932-2006), “TV Cello,” 1971): video tubes, TV chassis, Plexiglas boxes, electronics, and wiring. From the collection of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. (Courtesy of the Block Museum, \u00a9 Takahiko iimura)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Audio and video inundates the visitor with an aggressive hum of\u00a0 mismatched sounds from a woman\u2019s voice to classical music to a tension-igniting crash. Your eyes bounce from television screen to television screen, displayed throughout the gallery as integral to the works of art.<\/p>\n

This work demonstrates Moorman and her achievements – \u201cbarrier breaking,\u201d \u201cradical,\u201d and \u201cpart of a tradition of questioning our culture and our conventions of what we expect art to be, \u201d said Corinne Granof, one of the exhibit curators.<\/p>\n

Moorman strapped two television sets onto her chest, playing the cello\u00a0 as she learned at Julliard.\u00a0 The 1969 performance art was called “TV Bra for Living Sculpture.”<\/p>\n

Moorman, with Korean artist Nam June Paik\u2019s design-help, brought technology into the musical sphere with the “TV Cello,” which included three televisions with strings to represent a cello. \u00a0While Moorman performed on this instrument as though it were a traditional cello, the devices displayed three sets of images: originally, a direct feed of the immediate performance, a video collage of other cellists, and an intercepted broadcast television feed.<\/p>\n

\"Granof
Granof said people were receptive to “TV Cello” performance,\u00a0 first created in 1971. (Elizabeth Bacharach\/MEDILL)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Moorman, who traded classical music for the avant-garde performance art of the 1960s, famously collaborated with Paik, credited as the founder of video art.<\/p>\n

Together, Paik and Moorman applied new technologies of their time, such as the television. They redefined art by asking the question, \u201cwhy does art have to be a painting on a canvas,\u201d said Granof, curator of academic programs at the Block.<\/p>\n

During the 1960s, a television personified the domestic sphere, where it was passively watched by a distanced viewer and considered a \u201clowbrow medium,” said Evelyn Kreutzer, a second year Ph.D. student in Screen Cultures at Northwestern University and a fan of Moorman\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Moorman and Paik, however, took the television from this traditional perspective and made it into an engaging art experience for everyone. \u201cThey take television sets and actually transplant them into the public performance art spaces,\u201d Kreutzer said. \u201cOn the most basic level, it was about freeing art of any kind of power or hierarchal power based on social class, education, age.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moorman, who died in 1991, crushed the definition of \u201chighbrow art\u201d by interrupting seemingly traditional classical pieces with technology and other media.<\/p>\n

While performing John Cage\u2019s musical score “26\u20191.1499\u2019 for a String Player,” which called for each player\u2019s own reinvention, Moorman introduced objects such as a blender and a telephone in conventional venues such as an orchestral hall and even comic ones like the Tonight Show.<\/p>\n

Moorman took \u201ctechnology away from being this thing that\u2019s really separate from the body\u201d and made it an \u201cextension of the body,\u201d said Hannah Higgins, professor and chair of the art history department at University of Illinois at Chicago,<\/p>\n

Higgins added that Moorman, by physically and figuratively uniting technology, art and the body, extended the reach of technology. She reinvented the television by taking it beyond its traditional domestic sphere.<\/p>\n

Through these innovations, Moorman was able to fulfill Paik\u2019s goal of using \u201cart to humanize technology,\u201d Granof said.<\/p>\n

\"TV-Bra\"
Moorman wore the TV Bra about two years after she was arrested for performing in the nude. “TV Bra for Living Sculpture,” 1969, by Nam June Paik (America, born Korea, 1932\u20132006):: video tubes, televisions, rheostat, foot switches, Plexiglas boxes, vinyl straps, cables and copper wire. From the collection of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. (Photo by Elizabeth Bacharach\/MEDILL),<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI see\u2026her body and her soul so-to-speak, as intersecting with technological forms to create an emotive happening,\u201d said Scott Krafft, another of the exhibit curators and curator of the Charles Deering McCormick Library at Northwestern University Libraries.\u00a0 Moorman\u2019s archive is at Northwestern and the exhibit draws upon it.<\/p>\n

Moorman\u2019s dedication to \u201cbarrier breaking\u201d did not stop at her performances, Granof said. In 1963,\u00a0 the artist founded the Annual Avant Garde Festival of New York,\u00a0 providing an opportunity for more artists interested in experimental work to show their pieces. However, like her music, these festivals extended beyond conventional gallery spaces. Instead, it was \u201cpart of the fabric of the city,\u201d displayed in Central Park, Shea Stadium, the Staten Island Ferry and other locations,\u00a0 Granof said.<\/p>\n

Technology was at the center of these festivals as well, as Moorman engaged with engineers from Bell Laboratories and representatives of Con Edison.<\/p>\n

It is \u201camazing what she was able to pull off in terms of organizing the festivals,\u201d although she lived \u201cin just the edge of chaos,\u201d said Krafft, who has been working closely with the Moorman archive since their it arrived in 2001.<\/p>\n

“I sort of just fell in love with her. I thought she was very charming, uniformly kind, daffy, always late, sort of crazy and chaotic,” he said.<\/p>\n

The woman who harnessed television sets to her chest eventually died of breast cancer.\u00a0 \u201cA Feast of Astonishments\u201d keeps Moorman\u2019s spirit alive through the intersection of art and technology until it moves to New York University\u2019s Grey Art Gallery in fall 2016.<\/p>\n

\n

“Don’t Throw Anything Out”<\/h2>\n

Quoting Moorman\u2019s last words, \u201cDon\u2019t Throw Anything Out\u201d is an auxiliary exhibit exclusively at the Block Museum. It won’t travel with the rest of the show. Curated by Scott Krafft, it provides a deeper look into Moorman\u2019s personal life, specifically her methodical self-documentation throughout her battle with breast cancer. Krafft said he wanted to supplement the main exhibition by showing ideas about the \u201chuman\u201d Moorman. According to Krafft, Moorman was \u201calways on the phone, always scribbling something,\u201d and this show demonstrates how she \u201csacrificed all domestic comfort to house her archival material.\u201d\u00a0 Open through July 17.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Photo at top: “A Feast of Astonishments” is the first major exhibition of Charlotte Moorman’s work and legacy drawn from Northwestern University archives.(Elizabeth Bacharach\/MEDILL)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Elizabeth Bacharach Can a television and a topless cellist wearing a pair of them be art? To Charlotte Moorman\u2014the Julliard-trained cellist commonly known as the \u201ctopless cellist\u201d\u2014 a television is art. This is evident in the first major Moorman exhibition. \u201cA Feast of Astonishments,\u201d open through July 17 at Northwestern University\u2019s Mary and Leigh […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":194,"featured_media":32034,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194,452,28,29,585],"tags":[192],"class_list":["post-31865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-beyond-chicago","category-general-interest","category-health-and-science","category-winter-2016","tag-promo"],"yoast_head":"\nCharlotte Moorman: Shattering barriers between art and technology - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/charlotte-moorman-shattering-barriers-between-art-and-technology\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Charlotte Moorman: Shattering barriers between art and technology - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Elizabeth Bacharach Can a television and a topless cellist wearing a pair of them be art? To Charlotte Moorman\u2014the Julliard-trained cellist commonly known as the \u201ctopless cellist\u201d\u2014 a television is art. 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