Carolee Schneeman, (left) Eye Body: 36 Transformative Actions 1963, Paint, glue, fur, feathers, garden snakes, glass, plastic with the studio installation "Big Boards." (right) Hand / Heart for Ana Mendieta 1986, paint with blood, ashes, syrup on snow

Carolee Schneeman, Meat Joy 1964 Judson Church, NYC Carolee Schneeman, Meat Joy 1964 Judson Church, NYC. Group performance: raw fish, chickens, sausages, wet paint, plastic, rope, shredded scrap paper: (right) Interior Scroll, 1975

Hannah Wilke, Starification Object Series, 1975, chewing gum objects on artist’s body (right) Starification Object Series, chewing gum collage, 33 x 26 in

Hannah Wilke, February 19, 1992 #6 Intra-Venus Series Wilke, "Marxism and Art: Beware of Fascist Feminism," 1974-77

Mary Kelly (US b.1941), Postpartum Document, 1973-79 A 1999 installationdrawings, graphs and charts, objects and sound recordings

Marina Abramovic (b. 1946, Belgrade, Yugoslavia), “grandmother of performance art.” Rhythm O, performance 1977 compare Yoko Ono, Cut Piece, performance, 1964 (below) Abramovic, Art Must Be Beautiful, 1975, 3 video stills

Abramovic and Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen), (left) Rest Energy, video with audio of heart beats, 1980 (right) Imponderabilia, performance at museum entrance, 1978

Abramovic, Balkan Baroque, 1997, Venice Biennale, Golden Lion Award "I'm only interested in an art which can change the ideology of society...Art which is only committed to aesthetic values in incomplete...I don't defend anyone, neither the Serbs nor the Bosnians nor the Croats...I'm trying to deal with my own emotions, for example with this tremendous feeling of shame which I have about this war. As an artist, you can only deal with what there is inside you. I'm making this play because it is the only way to react emotionally to the war."

Abramovic, The House with the Ocean View, 2002

Ana Mendieta (b Havana, 1948; d New York,1985), Untitled (Facial Hair Transplants), 1972 compare Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, 1946

Mendieta, Untitled (Death of a Chicken), 1972 compare Hermann Nitsch, Viennese Actionism, First Action, 1962

Carl Andre, Equivalent VIII, 1966 Mendieta, Untitled (People Looking at Blood), 1973

Ana Mendieta, Untitled (Body Tracks), 1975

"I am overwhelmed by the feeling of having been cast from the womb (nature). My art is the way I re-establish the bonds that unite me to the universe." Mendieta, Untitled (Blood & Feathers), 1974

Mendieta, (left) Maroya (Moon), 1982: (right) Untitled (Silueta Series, Iowa), 1979

Mendieta, Silueta, 1979

Mendieta, Totem Grove Series, 1984-85 (installation Whitney MA, NYC, 2001)