A closer look
In the mid-20th century, the avant-garde film scene was an elitist boys' club focused on rigid, intellectual formalism. Carolee Schneemann completely shattered that pretension by making her own flesh the literal medium. In her groundbreaking body-based performance films and pieces—most infamously pulling a long paper scroll from her vagina and reading from it in 'Interior Scroll'—she forced the art world to confront female sexuality and raw physicality. She basically looked at the stuffy, male-dominated film establishment and said, 'I am the canvas, the camera, and the subject, deal with it.'
