Analysis Of Carolee Schneemann's 'Interior Scroll'

The Interior Scroll performance started off with Carolee Schneemann, who was covered by a sheet, walking up an extended table. While standing on the table she announced that she would read from her self-published book Cézanne, She Was a Great Painter, then let go of the sheet, revealing an apron (“Interior Scroll”). Although many will draw the conclusion that Carolee Schneemann is criticizing the artist Cézanne and his work with this book, she created it as a compilation of her earlier work with the introduction, “Around twelve years old I knew a few names of ‘great artists’…I decided a painter named ‘Cézanne’ would be my mascot; I would assume Cézanne was unquestionably a woman” (“Cezanne, She was a great painter”). The performance was continued
By exposing her naked body to the audience, Carolee Schneemann represents the vulnerability amongst women, who were set barriers over centuries. During her procedure of drawing lines of mud on her skin, she contours the curves of her body, which is similar to Lydia Schouten’s corset, as it advertises a specific female image. This can also be linked to male-dominated art movements such as Pop art, which she claims makes female nudes look “like an automobile. Mechanized. […] No lubricity, no fleshiness” (“Carolee Schneemann: ‘I never thought I was shocking’”). The mud across her body, therefore, represent the connection to the natural world, in comparison to the images of mechanized/industrialized women in Pop art. Because Carolee Schneemann is standing on an elevated platform (table), above the audience while reading from her book, the audience members are forced to listen. Metaphorically it could be interpreted how the stereotypes were pushed upon women. The action of Carolee Schneemann drawing the scroll from her vagina is the aggressive/confronting act in her performance. It is unpleasant to look at, yet it grabs the audience’s attention and enables the artist to finalize her message. Later, the artists mentioned that “[She] thought of the vagina in many ways – physically, conceptual: as a sculptural form, an architectural referent, the sources of sacred
The Dutch artist Lydia Schouten was born 1948 in Leiden, Netherlands (“Schouten, Lydia”) and a caused commotion in the 1970s with her anger driven performances (“Feminism Avant-Garde: Art of the 1970s: The Sammlung Verbund Collection, Vienna”). “Her performances – fifteen in total between 1977 and 1980 – were interpreted as critically examining existing stereotypes about femininity, identity, and gender relations” (“Feminism Avant-Garde: Art of the 1970s: The Sammlung Verbund Collection, Vienna”). As she finished school, Lydia Schouten attended the Free Academy of Visual Arts, to later resume her studies of sculpture at the Academy of Visual Arts in Rotterdam, Netherlands (“Lydia Schouten”). Later in her career, Lydia Schouten was awarded the Maaskant Award that earned her a thousand dollars, which she used to pay for her working-period in New York. When summarizing Schouten’s career, it can be divided into three sections: from 1978 to 1981 she explored the themes of performance art, 1981 to 1988 was the period in which she worked with video, and after that the artist’s interest longed for installation with the combination of video, sound and photography (“Lydia Schouten”). Schouten – like Abramović, VALIE EXPORT, and Scheemann – also had a number of art pieces she was known for. These included Lone Ranger Lost in