A Feast of Astonishments:

Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s–1980s

September 8–December 10, 2016

A Feast of Astonishments:
Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s–1980s

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"Now, an exhibition at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery, which traveled from Northwestern’s Block Museum, is set to reestablish Moorman’s underrecognized influence in the city where she pulled off some of her most daring feats. “A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s–1980s,” which opens this Thursday, tracks her many endurance-testing performances, inspired manipulations of avant-garde scores, and raucous, era-defining festivals where she gathered together some of the most adventurous artists of the 1960s and ’70s—all executed with her inexhaustible panache, and sweetened by her signature Southern drawl."

"So it makes sense that the new art season opens with exhibitions that celebrate her, two of them. The larger, “A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s-1980s,” at Grey Art Gallery, New York University, focuses on her career; the other, “Don’t Throw Anything Out,” at the university’s nearby Fales Library, on her life. Both are demandingly complex, made up of hundreds of objects, videos, photographs and audio recordings, not to mention explanatory labels. But once you plunge in, you’re likely to stay, whether you’re deepening an existing acquaintance with the artist or meeting her, as many people will be, for the first time."

"The life and work of a performer isn't easy to capture or contain inside a gallery; life force is a slippery thing, after all, unable to be collected, archived, or displayed. But co-curators Lisa Corrin and Corinne Granof of Northwestern's Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art, where the exhibition began, have put together a graceful and electrifying exhibition that vividly captures the whirl of Moorman's work and legacy, telling her story through instruments and sculptures, performance videos and television appearances and photographs (many of which were taken by the late, great photographer and Fluxus documentarian Peter Moore), as well as posters, scores, costumes, and other ephemera. All of which is to say: At last, Moorman has been given a spotlight she's deserved for quite some time."

A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s–1980s is the first exhibition to explore the vital contributions of one of the most overlooked figures of her generation. On view at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery from September 8 to December 10, 2016, the show illuminates how Charlotte Moorman (1933–1991) metamorphosed from a classically trained cellist into a barrier-breaking figure in performance art and an impresario of the postwar avant-garde. Included among the more than 300 items on view—artworks, film clips, music scores, audio recordings, documentary photographs, snapshots, performance props and costumes, ephemera, and correspondence—are 5 cello-based sculptural works that Moorman herself created.