Infinity Kisses II
1 of 2
Object Label
Not one to rest on her renegade avant-garde laurels, Carolee Schneemann’s series Infinity Kisses, begun in 1981, proposes an eccentric interspecies intimacy, one that the artist nurtured with generations of cats in her eighteenth-century farmhouse in upstate New York. Seeing her pets as reincarnations of a single being, Schneemann extended her career-long exploration of taboo sensuality into a series of blurry images that capture fleeting moments of hedonistic contact with a being she loved. Largely rejected by the art world at the time, Schneemann embraced her self-determined role as the ultimate outlandish cat lady, having learned from years of experience that it often takes the art world decades to catch up with transgressive women artists.
Caption
Carolee Schneemann (American, Fox Chase, PA, born 1939, died 2019, New Paltz, NY). Infinity Kisses II, 1990–1998. Chromogenic photograph, Each sheet: 60 × 40 in. (152.4 × 101.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Marc Routh by arrangement with the Remy-Toledo Gallery, 2005.60a-b. © artist or artist's estate. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
Infinity Kisses II
Date
1990–1998
Medium
Chromogenic photograph
Classification
Dimensions
Each sheet: 60 × 40 in. (152.4 × 101.6 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Marc Routh by arrangement with the Remy-Toledo Gallery
Accession Number
2005.60a-b
Rights
© artist or artist's estate
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Frequent Art Questions
Tell me more.
From 1981 to 1988, Schneemann produced a series of 140 photographs documenting the morning ritual of her cat Cluny, followed by her cat Vesper, giving her a "kiss."She had a tiny Olympus automatic camera, which she kept by her bed, and stated:"Every morning when the cat would kiss me, I would take a picture, so long as my partner — my human partner — was not annoyed. I gave myself the following conditions for making the pictures: I would have no control over lighting or focus, and, as much as possible, I would attempt to get the camera to capture what the kisses felt like. I have hundreds of images from this series."
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