By 1974 sexual politics was front-page news. In the wake of the Summer of Love, Roe v. Wade, and Stonewall, gender and sexuality came to be regarded as a fluid and malleable set of shifting identities. Downtown New York enjoyed an all-too-brief and rare period of sexual freedom—not only in life, but also in the work. Ana Mendieta and Carolee Schneemann created art addressing the body and domestic violence. Robert Mapplethorpe and Karen Finley staged and documented sexual taboos. Feminists such as Hannah Wilke and Lynda Benglis joined drag queens like Ethyl Eichelberger to tackle macho male stereotypes, and Annie Sprinkle went from porn star to performance artist. At times confrontational, at times humorous, the Downtown scene struggled to survive as the onset of AIDS and its attendant cultural backlash decimated the populations and spirit of its vibrant communities.
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In Up To and Including Her Limits, Schneemann swung naked from a rope harness, drawing on the walls and floor of the gallery in a feminist reworking of Pollock-type action painting. After premiering this performance cycle at the University Art Museum in Berkeley, California, she staged it at numerous Downtown venues throughout the mid-1970s, including Artists Space, the Kitchen, and Anthology Film Archives—where it opened their new space on Wooster Street in 1974. |