Edition: U.S. / Global

Charlotte Moorman, 58, Is Dead; A Cellist in Avant-Garde Works

Published: November 9, 1991

Charlotte Moorman, the cellist, avant-gardist and performance artist who won notoriety for her arrest by the New York City police in 1967 for playing the cello nude from the waist up, died yesterday in Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan. She was 58 years old and lived in Manhattan.

She died of cancer, which she had been fighting since 1979, said a friend, Barbara Moore.

"Historically, she will be seen as very important to the history of video and performance art," said John G. Hanhardt, curator of film and video at the Whitney Museum of American Art. "She was a vital presence and had a passionate commitment to the avant-garde. She contributed to the humanization of television and video."

She was called "The Jeanne d'Arc of New Music" by the composer Edgard Varese. Ms. Moorman was arrested on Feb. 9, 1967, by two policemen who interrupted her performance at the Cinematheque in Manhattan of "Opera Sextronique" by Nam June Paik, a composer, video artist and performance artist. She was performing nude, as the score had dictated, before an audience of 200 invited guests. Although Mr. Paik was released from custody and not charged, Ms. Moorman was tried and convicted for partial nudity. Later, the sentence was suspended.

In February 1977, a decade after the arrest, Ms. Moorman and Mr. Paik staged a re-creation of their original presentation, called "The People of the State of New York Against Charlotte Moorman." This time, the audience paid $10 a ticket, and this time the two police officers who stormed the stage and threw a coat around Ms. Moorman's shoulders were actors.

Madeline Charlotte Moorman was born in Little Rock, Ark., where she grew up, on Nov. 18, 1933. She received a bachelor's degree in music at Centenary College in Shreveport, La., and studied cello with Horace Britt at the University of Texas in Austin from 1956 to 1957.

Subsequently, she studied cello at the Juilliard School in Manhattan, and became a member of Jacob Glick's Boccerini Players from 1958 to 1963. She was also a member of the American Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski. Works Called Scandalous

When asked during an interview how she had become interested in the avant-garde, Ms. Moorman said that one day she had grown of a Kabalevsky cello piece and someone had suggested that she try playing John Cage's "26 Minutes, 1.499 Seconds for a String Player," which, among other things, requires the performer to prepare and eat mushrooms.

In 1963, Ms. Moorman was the founder of the Annual New York Avant-Garde Art Festival. Although it wasn't strictly annual, she presided over 15 festivals during the ensuing years. The last one was in 1982. The events showcased artists, often attracted wide publicity and took place at locales like Shea Stadium, Grand Central Terminal, the Staten Island Ferry and the World Trade Center.

She first collaborated with Mr. Paik in 1964. Other works were composed for her by Joseph Beuys and Jim McWilliams. She also performed works by Yoko Ono, who was once her roommate.

Some of Ms. Moorman's best-known pieces, many of them deemed to be scandalous at the time they were performed, are "Cello Sonata No. 1 for Adults Only" in 1965; "TV Bra for Living Sculpture," in 1969, in which she wore a bra made of two small television sets; "Global Groove," a video performance in 1973, and a 1971 Nam June Paik piece, popularly known as "The TV Cello," in which Ms. Moorman played a cello made out of three television sets, to which strings had been attached.

She is survived by her second husband, Frank Pileggi, of Manhattan.

Photo: Charlotte Moorman performing in her "TV Bra for Living Sculpture." (Peter Moore, 1976)