Laurie Anderson was born
in Chicago in 1947. One of eight children, she studied the violin
and, while growing up, played in the Chicago Youth Symphony. She
graduated in 1969 from Barnard College in New York, and went on
to study at Columbia University, working toward a graduate degree
in sculpture. The art scene of the early 1970s fostered an experimental
attitude among many young artists in downtown New York that attracted
Anderson, and some of her earliest
performances
as a young artist took place on the street or in informal art spaces.
In the most memorable of these, she stood on a block of ice, playing
her violin while wearing her ice skates. When the ice melted, the
performance ended. Since that time, Anderson has gone on to create
large-scale theatrical works which combine a variety of media—music, video, storytelling, projected imagery, sculpture—in which
she is an electrifying performer. As a visual artist, her work has
been shown at the Guggenheim Museum in SoHo, New York, as well as
extensively in Europe, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in
Paris. She has also released seven albums for Warner Bros., including
“Big Science,” featuring the song “O Superman” which rose
to number two on the British pop charts. In 1999, she staged “Songs
and Stories From Moby Dick,” an interpretation of Herman Melville's
1851 novel. She lives in New York.
For additional biographic & bibliographic information:
Laurie Anderson's Web Site | Sean Kelly Gallery, New York
Laurie Anderson on the Art21 blog |
