More Than Meat Joy : Collected Performance Works and Selected Writings
We are pleased to present a new edition of the only book that documents the complete works for 20 years of one of the original performance artists. As performance art books go, this one is especially unusual for its integration of large numbers of photographs with performance scripts as well as descriptive texts. Schneemann began making events and "happenings" in 1960; over thirty works are recorded through 1978 (this book was originally published in 1979). The range of her work has been substantial and broadly influential: from solo improvisations to large group ensemble pieces, from starkly bare stagings to multi-media and multi-sensory extravaganzas. Schneemann's performance works — direct extensions of her equally important work as a painter and filmmaker — have been performed throughout Europe and the United States. This book includes sections of her selected writings gathered from art and literary magazines, diaries, and journals; and is completed by a festschrift of tributes from notable artists, poets, and critics. More Than Meat Joy is vital to an understanding of the origins and intentions of performance art, as well as being the expression of an enormously important artist.
Paperback, sewn, 288 pages, 10.25 x 8.5", 1997, 0-929701-54-2
2nd edition (1997); approx. 400 photographs.
Edited and with a new preface by Bruce McPherson
"More Than Meat Joy is a book of greater significance than could be demonstrated through art or literary criticism. It is a first, and therefore unique. It is the first compilation of the work of one of the most original performance artists, herself perhaps the most complete." — Umbrella
"The subjectivity of the autobiographical form, the vulnerability and exposure of the first person text with all the emotional nakedness of Schneemann's style intact, provide us with a very direct access to the organic quality of the work itself. . . More Than Meat Joy is an impressive work and should be required reading for all art students, male and female alike." — New Women's Times Feminist Review
"A solid dossier of an original work in progress." — Lawrence Alloway, Art in America
"Schneemann's kinetic theater offers the best in happenings, contact improvisation, and body art -- a landmark oeuvre relevant to dance, visual arts, poetry, and aesthetics. Her controversial intermedia (1962-1978) addresses issues of the times -- nudity and sexuality, sexism, art, and politics. 'Fling it out and pull in the nets: expect to be surprised'. . ." — Booklist
"More Than Meat Joy is a powerfully instructive book, detailing the difficulties as well as the triumphs of a politically engaged art. As a work of art in its own right, it seems to me as historically persuasive and timely a document as any around today." — Henry Sayre, Minnesota Review