Charlotte Moorman facts for kids

Madeline Charlotte Moorman (November 18, 1933 – November 8, 1991) was an American cellist, performance artist, 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 and a frequent collaborator with Korean American artist Nam June Paik.

Early life

Madeline Charlotte Moorman was born on November 18, 1933, in Little Rock, Arkansas. At the age of ten she began to study cello. After her graduation from Little Rock High School in 1951 she had a music scholarship to attend Centenary College in Shreveport, Louisiana. She attained her B.A. in music in 1955. She later attained a M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and continued on to postgraduate studies at The Juilliard School in 1957 where she received her master's degree in cello.

Career

Following her studies at Juilliard, Moorman commenced a classical concert hall career as a cellist and joined the American Symphony Orchestra. 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 scene of the 1960s through her roommate and friend Yoko Ono. When asked during an interview how she had become interested in the avant-garde, Moorman said that one day she had grown [tired] of 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, Yoko Ono, John Cage, Wolf Vostell, Joseph Beuys, Joseph Byrd, Carolee Schneemann, and Jim McWilliams. This led to her loose involvement with the 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, in her honor. However, Moorman, like numerous other female artists including her close friend, Schneemann, was "blacklisted" by Fluxus-organizer George Maciunas for reasons that remain unclear.

Annual Avant Garde Festival of New York

In 1963 Moorman founded the Annual Avant Garde Festival of New York, which presented the experimental music of the Fluxus group and Happenings alongside performance, kinetic art, and video art. 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.

Collaborations with Nam June Paik

At the Second Avant Garde Festival, Moorman convinced Karlheinz Stockhausen to restage his performance piece, Originale, using his original collaborator Nam June Paik. 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).

In 2001, Northwestern University 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 and the Grey Art Gallery in 2016 and the Museum der Moderne Salzburg in early 2017.

Death

In the late 1970s she 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. Following her death, Schneemann created an online memorial for her friend.

See also

In Spanish: Charlotte Moorman para niños