A Feast of Astonishments.
Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s-1980s

Charlotte Moorman was a bold, barrier-breaking musician and performance artist, and a tireless champion of experimental art, whose avant-garde festivals in New York City brought new art forms to a broad public. To date, recognition of Moorman has been mostly limited to her collaborations with other artists, including composer John Cage and pioneering multimedia artist Nam June Paik, and to her 1967 performance of Paik’s Opera Sextonique, for which she became known as the “topless cellist” after being arrested on indecency charges.

A Feast of Astonishments looks deeper to portray Moorman as a leading international figure in her own right. With essays by art historians, curators, and musicologists, this catalog offers a fresh perspective and complements an exhibition featuring original scriptures, photographs, costumes, annotated music scores, archival materials, film clips, and audio recordings, many drawn from the Charlotte Moorman Archive at the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University Libraries.

Ed. by Lisa Graziose Corrin and Corinne Granof
With a foreword by Lisa Graziose Corrin, Lynn Gumpert and Sabine Breitwieser
Texts by Lisa Graziose Corrin, Ryan Dohoney, Corinne Granof, Hannah B. Higgins, Rachel Jans, Scott Krafft, Kathy O’Dell, Jason Rosenholtz-Witt, Joan Rothfuss, Kristine Stiles and Laura Wertheim Joseph

Softcover, 25,4 x 22,9 cm, 224 pages
Northwestern University Press; Evanston, IL, 2016
ISBN 978-0-8101-3327-3