CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/14/2014

Joan Rothfuss to Sign 'Topless Cellist' at Walker Art Center

On Sunday, October 5 at 2PM, Joan Rothfuss (former Walker Art Center curator and current co-curator of the upcoming Art at the Center: 75 Years of Walker Collections) will read from and sign her new book, Topless Cellist: The Improbable Life of Charlotte Moorman at the Walker.

In the 1960s, Juilliard-trained cellist Charlotte Moorman (1933–1991) became famous for her madcap (and often unclothed) performance antics. More significant is her transformative influence on contemporary performance practice and her dedication to the idea that avant-garde art should reach the widest possible audience. In Topless Cellist, the first book on Moorman’s life and work (2014, MIT Press), Rothfuss rediscovers the legacy of an extraordinary American artist.

ABOVE: Charlotte Moorman performing 'TV Bra for Living Sculpture' by Nam June Paik in 1976.

Moorman, who collaborated with artist Nam June Paik on such works as "Concerto for TV Cello and Videotapes," is pictured in two works in the current Walker exhibition Art Expanded, 1958-1978.