The chief preoccupations of this spring’s Costume Institute exhibition, “Costume Art”—putting fashion, an “embodied art form,” into direct dialogue with other artworks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection—can’t help but call to mind those artists who make thought-provoking and innovative use of their own bodies in their work.
From the avant-garde and conceptual art–derived body art of the 1970s to more modern interpretations by artists including Annie Sprinkle and Carmen Winant, here’s a roundup of body-centric artists whose respective oeuvres you should know.
Carolee Schneemann
There is perhaps no more literal interpretation of using the body as art than Schneemann’s 1975 work Interior Scroll, in which she undressed, painted her body with mud, read from her book Cezanne, She Was a Great Painter, and then slowly pulled a scroll from her vagina to read a response to male criticism of her work.