Carolee Schneemann Quotes

• Drawing and masturbation were the first sacred experiences I remember.

  Carolee Schneemann

  Drawing, Experience, Sacred

  Carolee Schneemann (2003). “Imaging Her Erotics: Essays, Interviews, Projects”, p.131, MIT Press

  19 Copy quote

• Be stubborn and persist, and trust yourself on what you love. You have to trust what you love.

  Carolee Schneemann

  Love You, Stubborn, Trust Yourself

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  17 Copy quote

• I wouldn’t want to be labelled unless it was something much broader and inclusive such as an ecological artist or a visionary artist, but there’s a constraint in the definition of a feminist artist, you’re an artist and you’re a feminist.

  Carolee Schneemann

  Artist, Feminist, Visionaries

  17 Copy quote

• I'm a painter. I'm still a painter and I will die a painter. Everything that I have developed has to do with extending visual principles off the canvas.

  Carolee Schneemann

  Principles, Canvas, Painter

  Carolee Schneemann (2010). “Carolee Schneemann: Within and Beyond the Premises”, State Univ of New York Pr

  11 Copy quote

• How do we get utopian thinking in a dystopian world? These days we aren't talking to each other - we're screaming and trying to hit each other over the head with rocks and sticks. A primitive fury has been unleashed by a president who has no culture, who cannot read, and who wants to determine power and aggression.

  Carolee Schneemann

  Thinking, Trying, President

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  10 Copy quote

• My teachers always said, "You're very talented, but don't set your heart on art. You're only a girl." I was inspired by Virginia Woolf in 1960, but they wouldn't let me write about her. They said she was a trivializer. I also wanted to do a paper on Simone de Beauvoir, and my philosophy teacher said, "Why would you write about the mistress? Write about the master." That was Sartre.

  Carolee Schneemann

  Girl, Teacher, Art

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  8 Copy quote

• I assume the senses crave sources of maximum information, that the eye benefits by exercise, stretch, and expansion towards materials of complexity and substance, . . . conditions which alert the total sensibility - cast it almost in stress - extend insight and response, the basic responsive range of empathetic-kinesthetic vitality.

  Carolee Schneemann

  Stress, Eye, Exercise

  Carolee Schneemann (2003). “Imaging Her Erotics: Essays, Interviews, Projects”, p.47, MIT Press

  16 Copy quote

• I grew up doing farm work, and there's a deep connection between the demands of farming and the demands of art creation. My sense of space and material has a lot to do with having been a chicken-killer and working with cows.

  Carolee Schneemann

  Art, Farming, Creation

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• The people from where I grew up have no appreciation for Paleolithic rocks or menstrual calendars. I'm a retriever of lost iconographies. But I had real training and have deep discipline, and I believe in it. Too much of the work I see today is just cultural junk. It's very superficial and has no rigor. It doesn't address the dynamic and real politics of an aesthetic structure.

  Carolee Schneemann

  Appreciation, Real, Believe

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• The way I understand composition and form and my ability to enter into material all comes from my disciplines and my commitment as a painter - my energy, my arm, my eyes, my sense of space and form and time. It's a wonderful realm for me. I never leave it.

  Carolee Schneemann

  Commitment, Eye, Discipline

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• An older friend once told me, "Life didn't ask for your opinion," which I liked.

  Carolee Schneemann

  Opinion

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  6 Copy quote

• In the end, it's always a single person who makes change. But I do think we should try to send artists out into the world and not have them all stick together in the big cities.

  Carolee Schneemann

  Artist, Thinking, Trying

  9 Copy quote

• It's really hard to have a fair discussion when you're faced with militarism, aggression, and greed. The militarists do not want dialogue. They want what they want. They're psychotic. They're greedy, they're narcissistic, and they're dangerous.

  Carolee Schneemann

  Greed, Narcissistic, Psychotic

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  6 Copy quote

• We don't necessarily need so many artists. I recommend that many of the people who think they want to be artists should go into the American Friends Service Committee, or do government outreach to communities that don't have water, or that need seeds or ecological assistance. It would create a system in which people with engaged sensibilities and potential insight assist instead of imposing. I think it could leap right out of the art world into wonderful community action.

  Carolee Schneemann

  Art, Thinking, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• It's a very difficult age when the forces of time want to destroy us and take us away. They're just snatching people like devils; death comes and grabs each of us.

  Carolee Schneemann

  People, Age, Devil

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I don't even like the word 'relax'! If I have a partner and we make love a lot, then I'm in a very pure state of being.

  Carolee Schneemann

  Making Love

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm used to working with neglect and misunderstanding, so this has been really challenging. It's a different psychic realm. The Lion did not land easily here.

  Carolee Schneemann

  Challenges, Different, Neglect

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

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