Charlotte Moorman

Widely known as "the topless cellist," Charlotte Moorman (1933-1991) was a classically-trained violoncellist[?] who became involved in the 1960s with the world of mixed-media performance art. A close associate of Korean performance artist Nam June Paik, she organized the Annual Avant Garde Festival[?] in New York City that ran from 1963 through 1980.

Madeline Charlotte Moorman was born in Little Rock, Arkansas on November 18, 1933. She studied cello from age ten and won a scholarship to Centary College[?] (Shreveport, Louisiana) where she took her B.A. in music in 1955. She received her M.A. from the University of Texas (Austin, Texas) and continued on to postgraduate studies at The Julliard School[?] in 1962.

She began a traditional concert hall[?] career but was soon drawn into the active mixed-media[?] performance art scene of the 1960s. She became a close associate and collaborator of Korean avant garde artist Nam June Paik, with whom she toured widely. In 1963 she established the New York Avant Garde Festival[?] which played annually in various locations including Central Park and the Staten Island Ferry[?] until 1980 (except for the years 1970 and 1976).

In 1967 she achieved notoriety for her performance of Paik's Opera Sextronique, a seminude performance which resulted in her arrest on charges of indecent exposure; she was given a suspended sentence. Composer Edgard Varèse[?] called her "the Jeanne d'Arc of New Music." She also performed Paik's TV Bra for Living Sculpture (1969) with two small television receivers attached to her breasts. Another memorable piece was her performance of Jim McWilliams[?]' Sky Kiss in New York and Sydney, Australia, which involved her hanging suspended from a set of ten brightly-coloured helium balloons.

As well as being a star performer of avant garde pieces, she was an effective spokesman and negotiator for advanced art[?], charming the bureaucracies of New York and other major cities into co-operating and providing facilities for controversial and challenging performances. The years of the Avant Garde Festival[?] marked a period of unparalleled understanding and good relations between advanced artists and local authorities.

In 1969 Moorman was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent a mastectomy and further treatment, to continue performing through the 1980s in spite of pain and deteriorating health. She died of cancer in New York City on November 8, 1991, aged 57.

Charlotte Moorman was involved with the Fluxus movement of avant garde and performance art and was a friend and associate of many well-known artists of the late twentieth century, including Nam June Paik, John Cage, Joseph Beuys, Yoko Ono, Carolee Schneeman[?], Jim McWilliams[?] and others. In 1966 artist Joseph Beuys created his work Infiltration Homogen für Cello, a felt-covered violoncello, in her honor. Body artist Carolee Schneeman[?] maintains a memorial page (http://time.arts.ucla.edu/terminals/schneemann/moorman) for Moorman on the Web.

External links

• artnet.com Magazine Reviews: Avant Garde Exposure by Alan Moore (http://www4.artnet.com/magazine/reviews/moore/moore6-12-00.asp)

• October 1969 BBC radio interview by Harvey Matusow with Charlotte Moorman: Avant Garde Arts in New York (44 mins mp3) (http://www.ubu.com/sound/moorman)

• Ryerson and Burnham Archives: The World of Charlotte Moorman Collection accession listing (this has a brief biography) (http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:HJZ5ReXdCIoJ:www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/rbarchives/moorman/moormanall.pdf+%22Charlotte+Moorman%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8)