Madeline Charlotte Moorman (November 18, 1933 – November 8, 1991) was an American cellist,

performance artist Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

, and advocate for avant-garde music. Referred to as the "Jeanne d'Arc of new music", she was the founder of the

Annual Avant Garde Festival of New York The Annual Avant Garde Festival of New York was an annual event that began in 1963 as an open forum for the emerging experimental music scene in New York City. Established in 1963 by cellist and performance artist Charlotte Moorman, the festival ran ...

and a frequent collaborator with Korean American artist

Nam June Paik Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super hi ...

Early life

Madeline Charlotte Moorman was born on November 18, 1933, in

Little Rock ( The "Little Rock") , government_type = Council-manager , leader_title = Mayor , leader_name = Frank Scott Jr. , leader_party = D , leader_title2 = Council , leader_name2 ...

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage ...

.Collins, Glenn
"Charlotte Moorman, 58, is Dead; A Cellist in Avant-Garde Works"
''The New York Times'', Retrieved 23 May 2014. At the age of ten she began to study

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

. After her graduation from

Little Rock High School Little Rock Central High School (LRCHS) is an accredited comprehensive public high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States. The school was the site of forced desegregation in 1957 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation by ...

in 1951 she had a music scholarship to attend Centenary College in

Shreveport Shreveport ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is the third most populous city in Louisiana after New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Baton Rouge, respectively. The Shreveport–Bossier City metropolitan area, with a population o ...

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

.Tarpley, John
"Charlotte Moorman (1933-1991)
The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, Retrieved 15 June 2014. She attained her

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...

in 1955. She later attained a

M.A. A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

from the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

and continued on to postgraduate studies at

The Juilliard School The Juilliard School ( ) is a private performing arts conservatory in New York City. Established in 1905, the school trains about 850 undergraduate and graduate students in dance, drama, and music. It is widely regarded as one of the most elit ...

in 1957 where she received her master's degree in cello.

Career

Following her studies at

Juilliard The Juilliard School ( ) is a private performing arts conservatory in New York City. Established in 1905, the school trains about 850 undergraduate and graduate students in dance, drama, and music. It is widely regarded as one of the most elit ...

, Moorman commenced a classical

concert hall A concert hall is a cultural building with a stage that serves as a performance venue and an auditorium filled with seats. This list does not include other venues such as sports stadia, dramatic theatres or convention centres that may ...

career as a cellist and joined the

American Symphony Orchestra The American Symphony Orchestra is a New York-based American orchestra founded in 1962 by Leopold Stokowski whose mission is to demystify orchestral music and make it accessible and affordable for all audiences. Leon Botstein is the orchestra's m ...

. From 1958-1963 she was also a member of Jacob Glick's Boccerini Players. However, she was soon drawn into the more experimental

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

scene of the 1960s through her roommate and friend

Yoko Ono Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up i ...

. When asked during an interview how she had become interested in the avant-garde, Moorman said that one day she had grown iredof a Kabalevsky cello piece and someone had suggested that she try playing John Cage's "26 Minutes, 1.1499 Seconds for a String Player," which, among other things, requires the performer to prepare and eat mushrooms. Moorman befriended and later performed with many well-known artists of the late 20th century, including Paik,

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...

Wolf Vostell Wolf Vostell (14 October 1932 – 3 April 1998) was a German painter and sculptor, considered one of the early adopters of video art and installation art and pioneer of Happenings and Fluxus. Techniques such as blurring and Dé-coll/age are ch ...

Joseph Beuys Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( , ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism, sociology, and anthroposophy. He was a founder of a provocative art mov ...

Joseph Byrd Joseph Hunter Byrd, Jr. (born December 19, 1937) is an American composer, musician and academic. After first becoming known as an experimental composer in New York City and Los Angeles in the early and mid-1960s, he became the leader of The Un ...

Carolee Schneemann Carolee Schneemann (October 12, 1939 – March 6, 2019) was an American visual experimental artist, known for her multi-media works on the body, narrative, sexuality and gender. She received a B.A. in poetry and philosophy from Bard College and ...

, and

Jim McWilliams Jim McWilliams (born February 10, 1937) is an American artist and graphic designer who was active as an avant-garde performer and composer during the 1960s and 1970s. Artist's books, design, and teaching McWilliams has been active as a graphic ...

."Charlotte Moorman and Nam June Paik 1976"
, Kaldor Art Projects, Retrieved 23 May 2014. This led to her loose involvement with the

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

movement of avant-garde performance artists. She later worked closely with many of its protagonists to interpret enigmatic scores written in the open-ended spirit of Fluxus. In 1966, Beuys, then associated with Fluxus, created his work ''Infiltration Homogen für Cello,'' a felt-covered

violoncello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G2, D ...

, in her honor. However, Moorman, like numerous other female artists including her close friend, Schneemann, was "blacklisted" by Fluxus-organizer

George Maciunas George Maciunas (; lt, Jurgis Mačiūnas; November 8, 1931 – May 9, 1978) was a Lithuanian American artist, born in Kaunas. A founding member and the central coordinator of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers ...

for reasons that remain unclear.

Annual Avant Garde Festival of New York

In 1963 Moorman founded the

,Norman, Geraldine
"Material Challenges"
''The Independent'', Retrieved 23 May 2014. which presented the experimental music of the Fluxus group and Happenings alongside performance, kinetic art, and video art.
Electronic Arts Intermix, Retrieved 15 June 2014. Despite the event's title the festival was not held annually. There were fifteen festivals from 1963 to 1980. In addition, the festivals were often organized at unique locations such as Shea Stadium, Grand Central Station, the World Trade Center, and the Staten Island Ferry. As well as being a star performer of avant-garde pieces, she was an effective spokesperson 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. Friend and artist

' created numerous memorable pieces for her to perform at the New York Avant Garde Festivals, including ''Sky Kiss'' which involved her hanging suspended from helium-filled weather balloons for the Sixth Avant Garde Festival, and ''The Intravenous Feeding of Charlotte Moorman'' for the 1973 edition.

Collaborations with Nam June Paik

At the Second Avant Garde Festival, Moorman convinced

Karlheinz Stockhausen Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groun ...

to restage his performance piece, ''

Originale ''Originale'' (Originals, or "Real Characters"), musical theatre with '' Kontakte'', is a music theatre work by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in collaboration with the artist Mary Bauermeister. It was first performed in 1961 ...

'', using his original collaborator

. This meeting began the decades-long collaboration between Moorman and Paik in which they fused sculpture, performance, music and art. In addition, Paik created many works specifically for Moorman, including ''TV Bra for Living Sculpture'' (1969) and ''TV-Cello'' (1971). On February 9, 1967, Moorman achieved widespread notoriety for her performance of Paik's ''Opera Sextronique'' at the Film-Makers Cinematheque in New York City."Opera Sextronique"
Electronic Arts Intermix, Retrieved 15 June 2014. For this performance, Moorman was to perform movements on the cello in various states of nudity. In the program for the performance, Paik wrote: "The purge of sex under the excuse of being 'serious' exactly undermines the so-called 'seriousness' of music as a classical art, ranking with literature and painting." During the first movement, Moorman played ''Elegy'' by the French composer

Jules Massenet Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (; 12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are '' Manon'' (1884) and ''Werther' ...

in the dark while wearing a bikini that had blinking lights. For the second movement, she played ''International Lullaby'' by Max Mathews while wearing a black skirt, but while being topless, and was arrested mid-performance by three plainclothes police officers. She was not able to return to perform the last two movements of the work. As a result of ''Opera Sextronique'', Moorman was charged with indecent exposure, though her penalty was later suspended, and gained nationwide fame as the "topless cellist." She was also fired from the American Symphony Orchestra. For her court trial, Moorman and Paik restaged and filmed the first two movements of ''Opera Sextronique'' with the filmmaker Jud Yalkut, though the film was not permitted to be shown in court. For the 9th Annual New York Avant Garde Festival in 1972, Moorman performed Jim McWilliam’s ''A Water Cello for Charlotte Moorman'' at South Street Seaport, New York City. Other collaborations with Paik focused more on humanizing technology and less on sexualizing music. For example, works like ''TV Bra for Living Sculpture'' (1969), in which two small television sets were attached to Moorman's naked breasts while she played cello. Following Moorman's death, Paik made a film entitled ''Topless Cellist'' (1995) about Moorman's life and avant-garde performances. In 2001,

Northwestern University Library Northwestern University Libraries is the main academic library system of Northwestern University. The library holds 7.9 million item including 228,505 maps, 107,446 print journals and 173,089 electronic journals, making it the 11th largest library ...

acquired her archive. A portion of the archive's photographs, scores, props, and costumes were exhibited at the

Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art The Block Museum of Art is a free public art museum located on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The Block Museum was established in 1980 when Chicago art collectors Mary (daughter of Albert Lasker) and Leigh B. Block (f ...

and the

Grey Art Gallery The Grey Art Gallery is New York University’s fine art museum, located on historic Washington Square Park, in New York City's Greenwich Village. As a university art museum, the Grey Art Gallery functions to collect, preserve, study, document, in ...

in 2016 and the

Museum der Moderne Salzburg The Museum der Moderne Salzburg has two buildings at two different locations in Salzburg, Austria. The Rupertinum in the old town for new artistic concepts opened in 1983 and the Museum on the Mönchsberg for modern art in a contemporary setting op ...

in early 2017.

Death

In the late 1970s she was diagnosed with

breast cancer Breast cancer is cancer that develops from breast tissue. Signs of breast cancer may include a lump in the breast, a change in breast shape, dimpling of the skin, milk rejection, fluid coming from the nipple, a newly inverted nipple, or a re ...

. She underwent a

mastectomy Mastectomy is the medical term for the surgical removal of one or both breasts, partially or completely. A mastectomy is usually carried out to treat breast cancer. In some cases, women believed to be at high risk of breast cancer have the operat ...

and further treatment, to continue performing through the 1980s in spite of pain and deteriorating health. She died of

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

on November 8, 1991, aged 57. Following Moorman's death, her friend and fellow artist Carolee Schneemann created an online memorial for her.Moorman memorial page.
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References

External links

Archivio ConzArtnet
* ttp://www.ubu.com/sound/moorman.html A Trove of Archival Performances by Charlotte Moorman from UBUWEBbr>''New York Times'' obituary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Moorman, Charlotte 1933 births 1991 deaths 20th-century American women artists 20th-century American women musicians American classical cellists American performance artists American women in electronic music Artists from Arkansas Centenary College of Louisiana alumni Contemporary classical music performers Deaths from breast cancer Deaths from cancer in New York (state) Juilliard School alumni Little Rock Central High School alumni Musicians from Little Rock, Arkansas University of Texas at Austin College of Fine Arts alumni Women classical cellists Women in classical music 20th-century cellists