Topless Cellist: The Improbable Life of Charlotte Moorman. [hardcover]
Language: English
Published by MIT Press (c2014)., Cambridge, MA/London., 2014
- First Edition
- Hardcover
- Used
Seller: Booktopia, Beverly Hills, FL, U.S.A.Booktopia
AbeBooks seller since November 25, 2025
Condition: Used - Near fine
£ 11.57
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
xiv. + 448pp. Profusely illustrated in b&w + 12 pages of glossy color plates. xiv. + 448pp. Appendix, Source Notes, Index. Pictorial endpapers. Printed on coated paper. HEAVY BOOK: Ships USPS Media Mail Only in a protective box. First Edition. 2nd (SECOND) Printing per print number line. Foreword by Yoko Ono. Small Remainder dot on top outer edge, TINY bleeds onto top margins pages 170-249 only. Near Fine/Fine dj. Publisher's overstock. Only flaw is small (3/16 inch) remainder dot in ink on top outer edge. Jacket like new: no creases, no tears.
Seller Inventory # 2779041922
- Title
- Topless Cellist: The Improbable Life of Charlotte Moorman. [hardcover]
- Author
- Rothfuss, Joan.
- Publisher
- MIT Press (c2014)., Cambridge, MA/London.
- Publication year
- 2014
- Condition
- Near fine
- Dust jacket
- Fine dj
- Binding
- HARDCOVER.
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 026202750X
- ISBN 13
- 9780262027502
- Edition
- First Edition.
- Dimensions
- Octavo.
The first book to explore the extraordinary career of musician and performance artist Charlotte Moorman, whose work combined classical rigor, avant-garde experiment, and madcap daring.
The Juilliard-trained cellist Charlotte Moorman sat nude behind a cello of carved ice, performed while dangling from helium-filled balloons, and deployed an array of instruments on The Mike Douglas Show that included her cello, a whistle, a cap gun, a gong, and a belch. She did a striptease while playing Bach in Nam June Paik's Sonata for Adults Only. In the 1960s, Moorman (1933–1991) became famous for her madcap (and often unclothed) performance antics; less famous but more significant is Moorman's 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 to explore Moorman's life and work, Joan Rothfuss rediscovers, and recovers, the legacy of an extraordinary American artist.
Moorman's arrest in 1967 for performing topless made her a water-cooler conversation-starter, but before her tabloid fame she was a star of the avant-garde performance circuit, with a repertoire of pieces by, among others, Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, John Cage, and Paik, her main artistic partner. Moorman invented a new mode of performance that combined classical rigor, jazz improvisation, and avant-garde experiment―informed by intuition, daring, and love of spectacle. Moorman's annual festival of the avant-garde offered the public a lively sampler of contemporary art in performance, music, dance, poetry, film, and other media.
Rothfuss chronicles Moorman's life from her youth in Little Rock, Arkansas (where she was “Miss City Beautiful” of 1952) through her career in New York's avant-garde to her death from breast cancer in 1991. (Typically, she approached her treatment as if it were a performance.) Deeply researched and profusely illustrated, Topless Cellist offers a fascinating, sometimes heartbreaking, often hilarious story of an artist whose importance was more than the sum of her performances.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Booktopia
Beverly Hills, FL, U.S.A.
AbeBooks seller since November 25, 2025
Shipping rates within U.S.A.
| Item | 5 to 14 business days | 3 to 6 business days |
|---|---|---|
| First item | £ 4.49 | £ 10.48 |
Payment methods
Store description
Over 45 years combined of book selling & making: retail, manufacturing, & used books. Booktopia began online in 2006. Our inventory is mostly non-fiction albeit we have some Literature and Literary Criticism. Americana (State/Town History), Natural History, Political History, Colonial & American History. Science, Medicine. Florida History. Vermont/New England History. All book conditions are based on our experience. Any Remainders or Ex-Library copies - of which there are few - are noted. NO International orders.…
Specialty
Used, out-of print.Seller's business information
Booktopia
FL, U.S.A.
Right of withdrawal
If you are a consumer you can withdraw from the contract in accordance with the following. Consumer means any natural person who is acting for purposes which are outside his trade, business, craft or profession.
Information regarding the right of withdrawal
Statutory right to withdraw
You have the right to withdraw from this contract within 14 days without giving any reason.
The withdrawal period will expire after 14 days from the day on which you acquire, or a third party other than the carrier and indicated by you acquires, physical possession of the last good or the last lot or piece.
To exercise the right of withdrawal, electronically fill in and submit a clear statement on our website, under "My Purchases" in "My Account". We will communicate to you an acknowledgement of receipt of such a withdrawal on a durable medium (e.g. by e-mail) without delay.
To meet the withdrawal deadline, it is sufficient for you to send your communication concerning your exercise of the right of withdrawal before the withdrawal period has expired.
Effects of withdrawal
If you withdraw from this contract, we will reimburse to you all payments received from you, including the costs of delivery (except for the supplementary costs arising if you chose a type of delivery other than the least expensive type of standard delivery offered by us).
We may make a deduction from the reimbursement for loss in value of any goods supplied, if the loss is the result of unnecessary handling by you.
We will make the reimbursement without undue delay, and not later than 14 days after the day on which we are informed about your decision to withdraw from this contract.
We will make the reimbursement using the same means of payment as you used for the initial transaction, unless you have expressly agreed otherwise; in any event, you will not incur any fees as a result of such reimbursement.
We may withhold reimbursement until we have received the goods back, or you have supplied evidence of having sent back the goods, whichever is the earliest.
You shall send back the goods or hand them over to Booktopia, Beverly Hills, Florida, U.S.A., +1 (352) 270-5188, without undue delay and in any event not later than 14 days from the day on which you communicate your withdrawal from this contract to us. The deadline is met if you send back the goods before the period of 14 days has expired. You will have to bear the direct cost of returning the goods. You are only liable for any diminished value of the goods resulting from the handling other than what is necessary to establish the nature, characteristics and functioning of the goods.
Exceptions to the right of withdrawal
The right of withdrawal does not apply to:
- The delivery of newspapers, journals or magazines with the exception of subscription contracts; and
- The supply of digital content which is not supplied on a tangible medium (e.g. on a CD or DVD) if you accepted when you placed your order that we could start to deliver it, and that you could not withdraw once delivery had started.