Carolee Schneemann at Barbican review: An emotionally draining look at a courageous artist

One of the show’s revelations is that this Sixties performance artist really considered herself a Cezanne-loving painter

‘Meat Joy’, 16-18 November 1964, Judson Dance Theatre, Judson Memorial Church, New York (Photograph by Robert McElroy Courtesy of the Carolee Schneemann Foundation and Galerie Lelong & Co., Hales Gallery, and P.P.O.W, New York and © Carolee Schneemann / ARS, New York and DACS, London 2022. Photograph © 2022 Estate of Robert R. McElroy / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS))

Barely clad men and women writhe around in raw fish, meat and paint. This is Carolee Schneemann’s 1964 performance Meat Joy, in which a troupe of performers indulge in improvised male-female role-play – including simulating sex. It sounds like everyone’s idea of the ultimate wild and wacky Sixties “happening”, and it’s one of many gender-expanding works in the Barbican’s major exhibition.

Schneemann’s solo naked performances included roller skating the length of a high-speed train while reciting Wittgenstein. She was a pivotal figure in the 1960s New York “downtown scene”, when the likes of John Cage, Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg rewrote the rulebook on what art can be, permanently smashing barriers between painting, film, music and performance. Yet Schneemann has been marginalised in histories of this hugely influential period, and not least because she was a woman.

Since 2017, however, when she was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale, and her death in 2019, Schneemann’s profile has risen hugely.