No wonder the exhibition seems to be aiming for some kind of record when it comes to trigger warnings, though I didn’t myself take up the offer of “support” it kindly extends in one of these on behalf of its staff. Either way, I didn’t fancy settling down beside the two blokes who were enjoying it when I visited. Were the curators trying for irony when they hit on the idea of showing Schneemann’s film of herself having sex in a pitch-dark room lined with red velvet cinema seats? I don’t know. (In the shop, I experienced a powerful throb of covetousness when I saw the Schneemann-inspired, hand-crafted mugs, which are more attractive by far than anything in the galleries.) Wander these “vulvic spaces”, and feel angry and mighty and all sorts of other major emotions. Gaze in amazement at a scroll the artist pulled from her vagina! Feast your eyes on scraps of loo roll she imprinted with her menstrual blood. The Barbican’s Carolee Schneemann (1939-2019) retrospective is, to use a non-art critical term, bat-shit crazy: a veritable parody of a show by a feminist performance artist. The V&A collection houses about 800,000 photographs. Carolee Schneemann’s exhibition seemed to be aiming for a record number of trigger warnings. II on her coronation day, taken by Beaton on the 2nd of June 1953.
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