Marina Abramovic
Encyclopedia
Marina Abramović is a Belgrade
-born New York
-based Serbian
performance art
ist who began her career in the early 1970s. Active for over three decades, she has recently begun to describe herself as the “grandmother of performance art.” Abramović's work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind.
. Both of her parents were Partisans
during the Second World War
: her father Vojo was a commander who was acclaimed as a national hero after the War; her mother Danica was a major in the army, and in the mid-sixties was Director of the Museum of the Revolution and Art in Belgrade.
Abramović's father left the family in 1964. In an interview published in 1998, she described how her "mother took complete military-style control of me and my brother. I was not allowed to leave the house after 10 o'clock at night till I was 29 years old. ... [A]ll the performances in Yugoslavia I did before 10 o'clock in the evening because I had to be home then. It's completely insane, but all of my cutting myself, whipping myself, burning myself, almost losing my life in the firestar, everything was done before 10 in the evening."
Abramović was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts
in Belgrade from 1965–70. She completed her post-graduate studies
at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb
, SR Croatia in 1972. From 1973 to 1975, she taught at the Academy of Fine Arts at Novi Sad
, while implementing her first solo performances.
From 1971 to 1976, she was married to Neša Paripović
. In 1976, Abramović left Yugoslavia and moved to Amsterdam
.
After cutting herself twenty times, she replayed the tape, listened to the sounds, and tried to repeat the same movements, attempting to replicate the mistakes, merging together past and present. She set out to explore the physical and mental limitations of the body – the pain and the sounds of the stabbing, the double sounds from the history and from the replication. With this piece, Abramović began to consider the state of consciousness
of the performer. “Once you enter into the performance state you can push your body to do things you absolutely could never normally do.”
In the final act of purification, Abramović leapt across the flames, propelling herself into center of the large star. Due to the light and smoke given off by the fire, the observing audience didn't realize that, once inside the star, the artist had lost consciousness from lack of oxygen. Some members of the audience realized what had occurred only when the flames came very near to her body and she remained inert. A doctor and several members of the audience intervened and extricated her from the star.
Abramović later commented upon this experience: “I was very angry because I understood there is a physical limit: when you lose consciousness you can’t be present; you can’t perform.”
In the first part, she took a pill prescribed for catatonia
, a condition in which a person’s muscles are immobilized and remain in a single position for hours at a time. Being completely healthy, Abramović's body reacted violently to the drug, experiencing seizure
s and uncontrollable movements for the first half of the performance. While lacking any control over her body movements, her mind was lucid, and she observed what was occurring.
Ten minutes after the effects of that drug had worn off, Abramović ingested another pill – this time one prescribed for aggressive and depressed people – which resulted in general immobility. Bodily she was present, yet mentally she was completely removed. (In fact, she has no memory of the lapsed time.) This project was an early component of her explorations of the connections between body and mind, which later took her to Tibet
and the Australian desert. Following Rhythm 2, she set to develop the rest of the series of rhythm projects, continually testing her endurance.
Abramović had placed upon a table 72 objects that people were allowed to use (a sign informed them) in any way that they chose. Some of these were objects that could give pleasure, while others could be wielded to inflict pain, or to harm her. Among them were a rose, a feather, honey, a whip, scissors, a scalpel, a gun and a single bullet. For six hours the artist allowed the audience members to manipulate her body and actions.
Initially, members of the audience reacted with caution and modesty, but as time passed (and the artist remained impassive) people began to act more aggressively. As Abramović described it later:
“What I learned was that... if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you.” ... “I felt really violated: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the audience. Everyone ran away, to escape an actual confrontation.”
, Abramović met the West German performance artist Uwe Laysiepen, who went by the single name Ulay. They have the same birthday, in different years.
When Abramović and Ulay began their collaboration, the main concepts they explored were the ego and artistic identity. This was the beginning of a decade of influential collaborative work. Each performer was interested in the traditions of their cultural heritages and the individual’s desire for ritual. Consequently, they decided to form a collective being called “the other”, and spoke of themselves as parts of a “two-headed body”. They dressed and behaved like twins, and created a relationship of complete trust. As they defined this phantom identity, their individual identities became less accessible. In an analysis of phantom artistic identities, Charles Green has noted that this allowed a deeper understanding of the artist as performer, for it revealed a way of “having the artistic self made available for self-scrutiny.”
While some critics have explored the idea of a hermaphroditic state of being as a feminist statement, Abramović herself denies considering this as a conscious concept. Her body studies, she insists, have always been concerned primarily with the body as the unit of an individual, a tendency she traces to her parents' military pasts. Rather than concern themselves with gender ideologies, Abramović/Ulay explored extreme states of consciousness and their relationship to architectural space. They devised a series of works in which their bodies created additional spaces for audience interaction. In "Relation in Space" (1976) they ran around the room – two bodies like two planets, mixing male and female energy into a third component called “that self.” "Relation in Movement" had the pair drive their car inside of a museum for 365 laps; a black liquid oozed from the car, forming a kind of sculpture, each lap representing a year. (After 365 laps they entered the New Millennium.)
In discussing this phase of her performance history, Abramović has said: “The main problem in this relationship was what to do with the two artists’ egos. I had to find out how to put my ego down, as did he, to create something like a hermaphroditic state of being that we called the death self.”
To create this “Death self,” the two performers devised a piece in which they connected their mouths and took in each other’s exhaled breaths until they had used up all of the available oxygen. Seventeen minutes after the beginning of the performance they both fell to the floor unconscious, their lungs having filled with carbon dioxide
. This personal piece explored the idea of an individual's ability to absorb the life of another person, exchanging and destroying it.
In Imponderabilia (1977, reenacted in 2010) two performers, both completely nude, stand in a doorway. The public must squeeze between them in order to pass, and in doing so choose which one of them to face.
In 1988, after several years of tense relations, Abramović and Ulay decided to make a spiritual journey which would end their relationship. Each of them walked the Great Wall of China
, starting from the two opposite ends and meeting in the middle. As Abramović described it: “That walk became a complete personal drama. Ulay started from the Gobi desert
and I from the Yellow Sea
. After each of us walked 2500 km, we met in the middle and said good-bye.”
Abramović conceived this walk in a dream, and it provided what she thought was an appropriate, romantic ending to a relationship full of mysticism
, energy and attraction. She later described the process: “We needed a certain form of ending, after this huge distance walking towards each other. It is very human. It is in a way more dramatic, more like a film ending … Because in the end you are really alone, whatever you do.”
Abramović reported that during her walk she was reinterpreting her connection to the physical world and to nature. She felt that the metals in the ground influenced her mood and state of being; she also pondered the Chinese myths in which the great wall has been described as a “dragon of energy.”
in New York City. On seven consecutive nights for seven hours she recreated the works of five artists first performed in the 60s and 70s, in addition to re-performing her own "Lips of Thomas" and introducing a new performance on the last night. The performances were very trying and physically exhaustive, they involved the physical and mental concentration of the artist, and they included Gina Pane
's Self-Portraits that required lying on a bed frame suspended over a grid of lit candles and Vito Acconci
's 1972 performance in which he masturbated under the floorboards of a gallery as visitors walked overhead. It is argued that she re-performed these works so as to pay her respect to the past, though many of the performances were altered from their originals.
Here is a full list of the works performed:
held a major retrospective and performance recreation of Abramović's work, the biggest exhibition of performance art in MoMA's history. During the run of the exhibition, Abramović performed "The Artist is Present," a 736-hour and 30-minute static, silent piece, in which she sat immobile in the museum's atrium, while spectators were invited to take turns sitting opposite her. A support group for the "sitters," "Sitting with Marina," was established on Facebook as was the blog "Marina Abramović made me cry" . In September of 2011, a video game version of Abramović's performance was released by Pippin Barr.
in Hudson, NY, intending to establish a nonprofit organization, Marina Abramović Foundation for the Preservation of Performance Art. She will use the space to work and develop ideas with video and post-production equipment and there will be a second property to house resident artists.
In 2009, Abramović was featured in Chiara Clemente's documentary Our City Dreams and a book of the same name. The five featured artists – also including Swoon
, Ghada Amer
, Kiki Smith
, and Nancy Spero
– "each possess a passion for making work that is inseparable from their devotion to New York," according to the publisher.
Abramović is also the subject of an independent feature documentary movie currently titled "MARINA" that is based on her life and performance at her retrospective "The Artist is Present" at the Museum of Modern Art in 2010. The film will be broadcast in the U.S. on HBO.
In January 2011, Abramović was on the cover of Serbian ELLE, photographed by Dushan Reljin.
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
-born New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
-based Serbian
Serbs
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...
performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
ist who began her career in the early 1970s. Active for over three decades, she has recently begun to describe herself as the “grandmother of performance art.” Abramović's work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind.
Early life
Marina Abramović's great uncle was Patriarch Varnava of the Serbian Orthodox ChurchSerbian Orthodox Church
The Serbian Orthodox Church is one of the autocephalous Orthodox Christian churches, ranking sixth in order of seniority after Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Russia...
. Both of her parents were Partisans
Partisans (Yugoslavia)
The Yugoslav Partisans, or simply the Partisans were a Communist-led World War II anti-fascist resistance movement in Yugoslavia...
during the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
: her father Vojo was a commander who was acclaimed as a national hero after the War; her mother Danica was a major in the army, and in the mid-sixties was Director of the Museum of the Revolution and Art in Belgrade.
Abramović's father left the family in 1964. In an interview published in 1998, she described how her "mother took complete military-style control of me and my brother. I was not allowed to leave the house after 10 o'clock at night till I was 29 years old. ... [A]ll the performances in Yugoslavia I did before 10 o'clock in the evening because I had to be home then. It's completely insane, but all of my cutting myself, whipping myself, burning myself, almost losing my life in the firestar, everything was done before 10 in the evening."
Abramović was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts
Academy of Fine Arts, Belgrade
The Faculty of Fine Arts is a higher education institution in Belgrade, Serbia. It was founded in 1937, by Toma Rosandić, Milo Milunović and Petar Dobrović. The Faculty is organized in three departments, of painting, sculpture and printmaking.- External links :*...
in Belgrade from 1965–70. She completed her post-graduate studies
Postgraduate education
Postgraduate education involves learning and studying for degrees or other qualifications for which a first or Bachelor's degree generally is required, and is normally considered to be part of higher education...
at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...
, SR Croatia in 1972. From 1973 to 1975, she taught at the Academy of Fine Arts at Novi Sad
Novi Sad
Novi Sad is the capital of the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina, and the administrative centre of the South Bačka District. The city is located in the southern part of Pannonian Plain on the Danube river....
, while implementing her first solo performances.
From 1971 to 1976, she was married to Neša Paripović
Neša Paripović
Neša Paripović is Yugoslavian artist. He is considered one of the key protagonists of Conceptual art in Yugoslavia in the 1970s. He was married to Marina Abramović from 1971 to 1976.-References:...
. In 1976, Abramović left Yugoslavia and moved to Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
.
Rhythm 10, 1973
In her first performance Abramović explored elements of ritual and gesture. Making use of twenty knives and two tape recorders, the artist played the Russian game in which rhythmic knife jabs are aimed between the splayed fingers of her hand. Each time she cut herself, she would pick up a new knife from the row of twenty she had set up, and record the operation.After cutting herself twenty times, she replayed the tape, listened to the sounds, and tried to repeat the same movements, attempting to replicate the mistakes, merging together past and present. She set out to explore the physical and mental limitations of the body – the pain and the sounds of the stabbing, the double sounds from the history and from the replication. With this piece, Abramović began to consider the state of consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
of the performer. “Once you enter into the performance state you can push your body to do things you absolutely could never normally do.”
Rhythm 5, 1974
Abramović sought to re-evoke the energy of extreme body pain, in this case using a large petroleum-drenched star, which the artist lit on fire at the start of the performance. Standing outside the star, Abramović cut her nails, toenails, and hair. When finished with each, she threw the clippings into the flames, creating a burst of light each time. Burning the communist five-pointed star represented a physical and mental purification, while addressing the political traditions of her past.In the final act of purification, Abramović leapt across the flames, propelling herself into center of the large star. Due to the light and smoke given off by the fire, the observing audience didn't realize that, once inside the star, the artist had lost consciousness from lack of oxygen. Some members of the audience realized what had occurred only when the flames came very near to her body and she remained inert. A doctor and several members of the audience intervened and extricated her from the star.
Abramović later commented upon this experience: “I was very angry because I understood there is a physical limit: when you lose consciousness you can’t be present; you can’t perform.”
Rhythm 2, 1974
As an experiment testing whether a state of unconsciousness could be incorporated into a performance, Abramović devised a performance in two parts.In the first part, she took a pill prescribed for catatonia
Catatonia
Catatonia is a state of neurogenic motor immobility, and behavioral abnormality manifested by stupor. It was first described in 1874: Die Katatonie oder das Spannungsirresein ....
, a condition in which a person’s muscles are immobilized and remain in a single position for hours at a time. Being completely healthy, Abramović's body reacted violently to the drug, experiencing seizure
Seizure
An epileptic seizure, occasionally referred to as a fit, is defined as a transient symptom of "abnormal excessive or synchronous neuronal activity in the brain". The outward effect can be as dramatic as a wild thrashing movement or as mild as a brief loss of awareness...
s and uncontrollable movements for the first half of the performance. While lacking any control over her body movements, her mind was lucid, and she observed what was occurring.
Ten minutes after the effects of that drug had worn off, Abramović ingested another pill – this time one prescribed for aggressive and depressed people – which resulted in general immobility. Bodily she was present, yet mentally she was completely removed. (In fact, she has no memory of the lapsed time.) This project was an early component of her explorations of the connections between body and mind, which later took her to Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
and the Australian desert. Following Rhythm 2, she set to develop the rest of the series of rhythm projects, continually testing her endurance.
Rhythm 0, 1974
To test the limits of the relationship between performer and audience, Abramović developed one of her most challenging (and best-known) performances. She assigned a passive role to herself, with the public being the force which would act on her.Abramović had placed upon a table 72 objects that people were allowed to use (a sign informed them) in any way that they chose. Some of these were objects that could give pleasure, while others could be wielded to inflict pain, or to harm her. Among them were a rose, a feather, honey, a whip, scissors, a scalpel, a gun and a single bullet. For six hours the artist allowed the audience members to manipulate her body and actions.
Initially, members of the audience reacted with caution and modesty, but as time passed (and the artist remained impassive) people began to act more aggressively. As Abramović described it later:
“What I learned was that... if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you.” ... “I felt really violated: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the audience. Everyone ran away, to escape an actual confrontation.”
Works with Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen)
In 1976, after moving to AmsterdamAmsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
, Abramović met the West German performance artist Uwe Laysiepen, who went by the single name Ulay. They have the same birthday, in different years.
When Abramović and Ulay began their collaboration, the main concepts they explored were the ego and artistic identity. This was the beginning of a decade of influential collaborative work. Each performer was interested in the traditions of their cultural heritages and the individual’s desire for ritual. Consequently, they decided to form a collective being called “the other”, and spoke of themselves as parts of a “two-headed body”. They dressed and behaved like twins, and created a relationship of complete trust. As they defined this phantom identity, their individual identities became less accessible. In an analysis of phantom artistic identities, Charles Green has noted that this allowed a deeper understanding of the artist as performer, for it revealed a way of “having the artistic self made available for self-scrutiny.”
While some critics have explored the idea of a hermaphroditic state of being as a feminist statement, Abramović herself denies considering this as a conscious concept. Her body studies, she insists, have always been concerned primarily with the body as the unit of an individual, a tendency she traces to her parents' military pasts. Rather than concern themselves with gender ideologies, Abramović/Ulay explored extreme states of consciousness and their relationship to architectural space. They devised a series of works in which their bodies created additional spaces for audience interaction. In "Relation in Space" (1976) they ran around the room – two bodies like two planets, mixing male and female energy into a third component called “that self.” "Relation in Movement" had the pair drive their car inside of a museum for 365 laps; a black liquid oozed from the car, forming a kind of sculpture, each lap representing a year. (After 365 laps they entered the New Millennium.)
In discussing this phase of her performance history, Abramović has said: “The main problem in this relationship was what to do with the two artists’ egos. I had to find out how to put my ego down, as did he, to create something like a hermaphroditic state of being that we called the death self.”
To create this “Death self,” the two performers devised a piece in which they connected their mouths and took in each other’s exhaled breaths until they had used up all of the available oxygen. Seventeen minutes after the beginning of the performance they both fell to the floor unconscious, their lungs having filled with carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom...
. This personal piece explored the idea of an individual's ability to absorb the life of another person, exchanging and destroying it.
In Imponderabilia (1977, reenacted in 2010) two performers, both completely nude, stand in a doorway. The public must squeeze between them in order to pass, and in doing so choose which one of them to face.
In 1988, after several years of tense relations, Abramović and Ulay decided to make a spiritual journey which would end their relationship. Each of them walked the Great Wall of China
Great Wall of China
The Great Wall of China is a series of stone and earthen fortifications in northern China, built originally to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire against intrusions by various nomadic groups...
, starting from the two opposite ends and meeting in the middle. As Abramović described it: “That walk became a complete personal drama. Ulay started from the Gobi desert
Gobi Desert
The Gobi is a large desert region in Asia. It covers parts of northern and northwestern China, and of southern Mongolia. The desert basins of the Gobi are bounded by the Altai Mountains and the grasslands and steppes of Mongolia on the north, by the Hexi Corridor and Tibetan Plateau to the...
and I from the Yellow Sea
Yellow Sea
The Yellow Sea is the name given to the northern part of the East China Sea, which is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean. It is located between mainland China and the Korean Peninsula. Its name comes from the sand particles from Gobi Desert sand storms that turn the surface of the water golden...
. After each of us walked 2500 km, we met in the middle and said good-bye.”
Abramović conceived this walk in a dream, and it provided what she thought was an appropriate, romantic ending to a relationship full of mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
, energy and attraction. She later described the process: “We needed a certain form of ending, after this huge distance walking towards each other. It is very human. It is in a way more dramatic, more like a film ending … Because in the end you are really alone, whatever you do.”
Abramović reported that during her walk she was reinterpreting her connection to the physical world and to nature. She felt that the metals in the ground influenced her mood and state of being; she also pondered the Chinese myths in which the great wall has been described as a “dragon of energy.”
Seven Easy Pieces, November 2005
Beginning on November 9, 2005, Abramović presented Seven Easy Pieces at the Guggenheim MuseumSolomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
in New York City. On seven consecutive nights for seven hours she recreated the works of five artists first performed in the 60s and 70s, in addition to re-performing her own "Lips of Thomas" and introducing a new performance on the last night. The performances were very trying and physically exhaustive, they involved the physical and mental concentration of the artist, and they included Gina Pane
Gina Pane
Gina Pane..... was a French artist. She was one of the founders of the 1970s Body Art movement in France, called "Art corporel". Pane was best known for her performance piece The Conditioning which was recreated by Marina Abramovic as part of her 7 easy pieces in 2005....
's Self-Portraits that required lying on a bed frame suspended over a grid of lit candles and Vito Acconci
Vito Acconci
Vito Hannibal Acconci is a Bronx, New York-born, Brooklyn-based designer, landscape architect, performance and installation artist.-Education:...
's 1972 performance in which he masturbated under the floorboards of a gallery as visitors walked overhead. It is argued that she re-performed these works so as to pay her respect to the past, though many of the performances were altered from their originals.
Here is a full list of the works performed:
- Bruce NaumanBruce NaumanBruce Nauman is a contemporary American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives in Galisteo, New Mexico....
's Body PressureBody PressureBody Pressure is a 1974 performance piece by American artist Bruce Nauman. The performer is instructed to press himself against a pane of glass in various positions; Nauman says that it "may become a very erotic experience"....
(1974) - Vito AcconciVito AcconciVito Hannibal Acconci is a Bronx, New York-born, Brooklyn-based designer, landscape architect, performance and installation artist.-Education:...
's SeedbedSeedbed (performance piece)Seedbed is a performance piece first performed by Vito Acconci on 15–29 January 1972 at Sonnabend Gallery in New York.In the piece, there is a low wooden ramp merging with the floor...
(1972) - Valie ExportValie ExportValie Export is an Austrian artist...
's Action Pants: Genital Panic (1969) - Gina PaneGina PaneGina Pane..... was a French artist. She was one of the founders of the 1970s Body Art movement in France, called "Art corporel". Pane was best known for her performance piece The Conditioning which was recreated by Marina Abramovic as part of her 7 easy pieces in 2005....
's The Conditioning (1973) - Joseph BeuysJoseph BeuysJoseph Beuys was a German performance artist, sculptor, installation artist, graphic artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art.His extensive work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy; it culminates in his "extended definition of art" and the idea of social...
's How to Explain Pictures to a Dead HareHow to Explain Pictures to a Dead HareHow to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare was a performance piece enacted by the German artist Joseph Beuys on 26 November 1965 at the Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf...
(1965) - Abramović's own Lips of Thomas (1975)
- Abramović's own Entering the Other Side (2005)
The Artist Is Present, March–May 2010
From March 14 to May 31, 2010, the Museum of Modern ArtMuseum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
held a major retrospective and performance recreation of Abramović's work, the biggest exhibition of performance art in MoMA's history. During the run of the exhibition, Abramović performed "The Artist is Present," a 736-hour and 30-minute static, silent piece, in which she sat immobile in the museum's atrium, while spectators were invited to take turns sitting opposite her. A support group for the "sitters," "Sitting with Marina," was established on Facebook as was the blog "Marina Abramović made me cry" . In September of 2011, a video game version of Abramović's performance was released by Pippin Barr.
Later life
Marina Abramović purchased a theater two hours north of ManhattanManhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
in Hudson, NY, intending to establish a nonprofit organization, Marina Abramović Foundation for the Preservation of Performance Art. She will use the space to work and develop ideas with video and post-production equipment and there will be a second property to house resident artists.
In 2009, Abramović was featured in Chiara Clemente's documentary Our City Dreams and a book of the same name. The five featured artists – also including Swoon
Swoon
Swoon may refer to:*Fainting*"Swoon" , a 2009 song by Imogen Heap from the album Ellipse*"Swoon" , a 2010 single by The Chemical Brothers*Swoon , the second album by Silversun Pickups...
, Ghada Amer
Ghada Amer
Ghada Amer is a contemporary artist living and working in New York City. She emigrated from her birth country at age 11 and was educated in Paris and Nice...
, Kiki Smith
Kiki Smith
Kiki Smith is an American artist classified as a feminist artist, a movement with beginnings in the twentieth century...
, and Nancy Spero
Nancy Spero
Nancy Spero was an American visual artist.-Life and work:Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Spero lived for much of her life in New York City. She was married to, and collaborated with artist Leon Golub....
– "each possess a passion for making work that is inseparable from their devotion to New York," according to the publisher.
Abramović is also the subject of an independent feature documentary movie currently titled "MARINA" that is based on her life and performance at her retrospective "The Artist is Present" at the Museum of Modern Art in 2010. The film will be broadcast in the U.S. on HBO.
In January 2011, Abramović was on the cover of Serbian ELLE, photographed by Dushan Reljin.
Prizes and awards
- Golden Lion Award, XLVII Venice BiennaleVenice BiennaleThe Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
, 1997 - Niedersächsischer Kunstpreis, 2003
- New York Dance and Performance Awards (The Bessies), 2003
- International Association of Art CriticsInternational Association of Art CriticsThe International Association of Art Critics was founded in 1950 to revitalize critical discourse, which suffered under Fascism during World War II. AICA was initially affiliated with UNESCO as a non-governmental organization...
, Best Show in a Commercial Gallery Award, 2003 - Honourary Doctor of Arts, University of Plymouth UK, September 25, 2009
- Cultural Leadership Award, American Federation of ArtsAmerican Federation of ArtsThe American Federation of Arts is an organization in the United States of museums and other entities involved in the arts. It was established in 1909 at a convention held in Washington, D. C. from May 11–13 of that year called by the National Academy of Art. The concept for the organization was...
, October 26, 2011
See also
- Avant-gardeAvant-gardeAvant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
- Experimental theatreExperimental theatreExperimental theatre is a general term for various movements in Western theatre that began in the late 19th century as a retraction against the dominant vent governing the writing and production of dramatical menstrophy, and age in particular. The term has shifted over time as the mainstream...
- FluxusFluxusFluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
- Richard ForemanRichard ForemanRichard Foreman is an American playwright and avant-garde theater pioneer. He is the founder of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater.-Life :...
- HappeningHappeningA happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered art, usually as performance art. Happenings take place anywhere , are often multi-disciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience...
- Dick HigginsDick HigginsDick Higgins was a composer, poet, printer, and early Fluxus artist. Higgins was born in Cambridge, England, but raised in the United States in various parts of New England, including Worcester, Massachusetts, Putney, Vermont, and Concord, New Hampshire.Like other Fluxus artists, Higgins studied...
- IntermediaIntermediaIntermedia was a concept employed in the mid-sixties by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins to describe the ineffable, often confusing, inter-disciplinary activities that occur between genres that became prevalent in the 1960s. Thus, the areas such as those between drawing and poetry, or between painting...
- Allan KaprowAllan KaprowAllan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings - some 200 of them - evolved over the years...
- Elizabeth LeCompteElizabeth LeCompteElizabeth LeCompte is a founding member and the theater director of experimental theater collective The Wooster Group .-Biography:...
- Ontological-Hysteric TheaterOntological-Hysteric TheaterThe Ontological-Hysteric Theater was founded in 1968 by Richard Foreman. According to his website, his aim was-Total Theater:According to his website,-Production history:...
- Performance artPerformance artIn art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
- Richard SchechnerRichard SchechnerRichard Schechner is Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University , editor of TDR: The Drama Review, and artistic director of East Coast Artists. His BA is from Cornell University , MA from the University of Iowa , and PhD from Tulane University...
- Speculations: An Essay on the TheaterSpeculations: An Essay on the TheaterSpeculations: An Essay on the Theater is a treatise by one of today's major experimental playwrights: Mac Wellman. It was published with the collection of plays entitled The Difficulty of Crossing a Field...
- The Flea TheaterThe Flea TheaterThe Flea Theater, founded in 1996, is a theatre in the TriBeCa section of New York City. It presents primarily new American theatre, and provides a venue for film stars to act on a very small stage. It is the home of "The Bat Theater Company", an Obie Award winning resident acting troupe of...
- The Wooster GroupThe Wooster GroupThe Wooster Group is a New York City-based experimental theater company known for creating numerous original dramatic works. It gradually emerged during 1975-1980 from Richard Schechner's The Performance Group and took its name in 1980...
- Mac WellmanMac WellmanMac Wellman is an American playwright, author, and poet. Wellman is best known for his experimental work in the theater which rebels against theatrical conventions, often abandoning such traditional elements as plot and character altogether...
Works by Abramović and collaborators
- Artist Body: Performances 1969–1998, artist, Abramović; authors Abramović, Toni Stooss, Thomas McEvilley, Bojana Pejic, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Chrissie Iles, Jan Avgikos, Thomas Wulffen, Velimir Abramović; English ed. (Charta, 1998) ISBN 978-88-8158-175-7.
- The Bridge / El Puente, artist Abramović, authors Abramović, Pablo J. Rico, Thomas Wulffen (Charta, 1998) ISBN 978-844-82-1857-7.
- Performing Body, artist Abramović, authors Abramović, Dobrila Denegri (Charta, 1998) ISBN 978-88-8158-160-3.
- Balkan Baroque, (Pierre Coulibeuf, 1999)
- Public Body: Installations and Objects 1965–2001, artist Abramović, authors Celant, GermanoGermano CelantGermano Celant is an Italian art historian, critic and curator, mostly renewed for being one of the founding members of the "Arte Povera" movement in 1967....
, Abramović (Charta, 2001) ISBN 978-88-8158-295-2. - Marina Abramović, fifteen artists, Fondazione Ratti; co-authors Abramović, Anna Daneri, Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, Lóránd Hegyi, Societas Raffaello Sanzio, Angela Vettese (Charta, 2002) ISBN 978-88-8158-365-2.
- Student Body, artist Abramović, vari; authors Abramović, Miguel Fernandez-Cid, studenti; (Charta, 2002) ISBN 978-88-8158-449-9.
- The House with the Ocean View, artist Abramović; authors Abramović, Sean KellySean KellySean Kelly may refer to:* Sean Kelly , Professor of philosophy at Harvard University* Sean Kelly , Irish professional road bicycle racer...
, Thomas McEvilley, Cindy Carr, Chrissie Iles, RosaLee Goldberg, Peggy Phelan (Charta, 2004) ISBN 978-88-8158-436-9; the 2002 piece of the same name, in which Abramović lived on three open platforms in a gallery with only water for 12 days, was reenacted in Sex and the CitySex and the CitySex and the City is an American television comedy-drama series created by Darren Star and produced by HBO. Broadcast from 1998 until 2004, the original run of the show had a total of ninety-four episodes...
in the HBO series' sixth season. - Marina Abramović: The Biography of Biographies, artist Abramović; co-authors Abramović, Michael Laub, Monique Veaute, Fabrizio Grifasi (Charta, 2004) ISBN 978-88-8158-495-6.
- Balkan Epic, (Skira, 2006).
- Balkan Erotic Epic, as producer and director, DestrictedDestrictedDestricted is an ongoing project of films that explore the line where art and pornography intersect. The UK and US film releases had overlapping but different film lineups...
(Offhollywood Digital, 2006) - Seven Easy Pieces, artist, Abramović; authors Nancy Spector, Erika Fischer-Lichte, Sandra Umathum, Abramović; (Charta, 2007). ISBN 978-88-8158-626-4.
Critical and academic studies
- Laurie Anderson, “Marina Abramović,” Bomb Summer 2003: 25–31.
- Patrick Anderson, "How to Stage Self-Consumption," So Much Wasted: Hunger, Performance, and the Morbidity of Resistance. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. pp. 85–109.
- Klaus Biesenbach (ed.), Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present, Exhibition Catalog with essays by Klaus Biesenbach, Arthur C. Danto, Chrissie Iles, Nancy Spector, and Jovana Stokić, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2010
- Aline Brandauer,. "Marina Abramović: Double Blind." Sculpture, July/August 1995, pp. 23–27.
- A Daneri, et al., (eds.), Marina Abramović, (Charta, 2002)
- Jovan DespotovicJovan DespotovićJovan Despotović , born 16 April 1952 in Belgrade , is a Serbian art historian and art critic...
, Marina Abramović, ’Fin de siecle’ – Balkans way, Borba, Belgrade, September 6–7, 1997, p. 17 - Jennifer Fisher, “Interperformance: The Live Tableaux of Suzanne LacySuzanne LacySuzanne Lacy is an internationally known artist, educator, writer, and former public servant. She describes her work, which includes "installations, video, and large-scale performances", as focusing on "social themes and urban issues." She also served in the education cabinet of Jerry Brown, then...
, Janine AntoniJanine AntoniJanine Antoni is a contemporary artist whose work focuses mostly on process. She often uses her whole body or different parts of it, such as her mouth, hair, eyelashes, and brain as tools and with them performs everyday activities to create her artwork.She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College...
, and Marina Abramović,” Art Journal 56 (1997): 28–33. - Charles Green, “Doppelgangers and the Third Force: The Artistic Collaborations of Gilbert & GeorgeGilbert and GeorgeGilbert & George are two artists who work together as a collaborative duo. Gilbert Proesch and George Passmore have become famous for their distinctive, highly formal appearance and manner and their brightly coloured graphic-style photo-based artworks.-Early life:Gilbert Proesch was...
and Marina Abramović/Ulay,” Art Journal 59.2: 36–45. - Shogo Hagiwara, “Art Hurts: Blood and Pain are Abramović’s Media,” The Daily Yomiuri April 1, 2004 p18.
- Janet Kaplan, “Deeper and Deeper: Interview with Marina Abramović,” Art Journal 58:2 (1999):6–19.
- Zoe Kosmidou, “A Conversation with Marina Abramović,” Sculpture Nov. 2001: 27–31.
- Tom Lubbock, “Visual Arts: Caught In the Act; It’s Video But Not As We Know It,” The Independent September 2, 2003.
- Thomas McEvilley, “Performing the Present Tense,” Art in America April 2003: 114–117; 153.
- Thomas McEvilley, "Art, Love, Friendship: Marina Abramović and Ulay, Together & Apart," book, Documentext (McPherson & Company), 2010.
- Asami Nagai, “Art in Harmony with Nature,” The Daily Yomiuri July 24, 2003, p. 13.
- Anna NovakovAnna NovakovAnna Novakov is a Serbian-American art historian, critic, educator and curator based at Saint Mary's College of California. A prolific writer, Novakov has received numerous awards and grants for her research and art criticism...
, “Point of Access: Marina Abramović’s 1975 Performance Role Exchange,” Woman’s Art Journal Fall 2003/Winter 2004: 31–35. - Jennifer Phipps, “Marina Abramović/Ulay/Ulay/Marina Abramović,” Art & Text 3 (1981).
- Theresa Smalec, “Not What It Seems: The Politics of Re-Performing Vito Acconci's Seedbed,” PMC: Postmodern Culture 17 (1) 2006
- “Writing Art,” Art Monthly 1999 230:13–17.
External links
- Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present at MoMA
- Artfacts.Net profile with major exhibitions and public collections.
- Coulibeuf, Pierre. Balkan Baroque 1999 (video). "The autobiography, both real and imaginary, of Marina Abramović...."
- Interview with Bernard Goy for Journal of Contemporary Art, June 1990
- Marina Abramović, The Hero (for Antonio) – 2001. Vejer de la Frontera, Spain: NMAC Foundation.
- Marina Abramović, Human Nests – 2001. Vejer de la Frontera, Spain: NMAC Foundation.
- Marina Abramović Institute, San Francisco, California, USA.
- Marina Abramović: Seven Easy Pieces, November 9–15, 2005, 5PM to 12AM. New Way: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
- Mediateca Media Art Space documentary archive with biography, works, and references.
- Rosenberg, Karen. Provocateur: Marina Abramović (interview). New York magazine, December 4, 2005.
- Lisson GalleryLisson GalleryThe Lisson Gallery is a contemporary art gallery in Bell Street, Lisson Grove, London, founded by Nicholas Logsdail in 1967. The gallery represents such artists as Ai Weiwei, John Latham, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Jonathan Monk, Julian Opie, Richard Wentworth and Turner Prize winners Anish Kapoor...
Marina Abramović artist page. Including works, bio, exhibitions and catalogues - Sean Kelly Gallery artist page with biography, works, press, exhibitions, and catalogues.
- Spector, Nancy. Marina Abramović, Rhythm 5, 1974, published 1994. Guggenheim collection online.
- "Marina" the feature documentary film
- Interview, March 2010, with Robert Ayers at A Sky filled with Shooting Stars.
- Arthur C. Danto, "Sitting with Marina", New York Times, 2010/05/23
- Vice magazine interview, November 2010.
- 2011 James T. Demetrion Lecture: "How Performance Art is Entering the History of Art", press release, March 9, 2011, Hirschorn MuseumHirshhorn Museum and Sculpture GardenThe Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and is part of the...
, Washington, DC, USA; lecture April 5, 2011. - Conversation: Marina Abramovic, interview with Jeffrey BrownJeffrey Brown (Journalist)Jeffrey Brown is an American journalist and a senior correspondent and news anchor for the PBS Newshour since May 2005.- Education and personal life :...
, PBS Newshour Art Beat, April 8, 2011; transcript and video. Link: The Hirshhorn conducted a Twitter forum with Abramovic in late March; Q&A here. - Tate: Meet the Artist: Marina Abramovic The artist talks about her performance practice. January 29, 2009.