Marina Abramovic (Eliza Hastie)

Marina Abramovic, “The Grandmother of Performance Art,”

Abramovic was born on November 30, 1946 in what is now Serbia. Performance art for her was a way to rebel against “the post-war miseries.” She pushes the limits of physical and mental potential. Throughout her career as a performance artist, she has lacerated herself, flagellated herself, frozen her body on blocks of ice, taken mind- and muscle-controlling drugs causing her to fall unconscious, and nearly died from asphyxiation. Her work strives to investigate “the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind.” She has used her own body as a medium to work with and manipulate since she started performing many years ago. Her goal is to figure out a way using art to make people grow freer.




Abramovic had an interesting childhood and was raised by a former major in the army, her mother. She was forbidden to be out of the house past ten at night. This went on until Abramovic was 29. I think it explains where some of her bizarre ideas come from, being so cooped up for so long.
Abramovic attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade from 1965-1970. She attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagrab, Croatia in 1972 for her post-graduate studies. She taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Novi Sad from 1973-1975. During this time she began to start her first solo performances.

Abramovic’s performance art largely deals with pain. In her work Rhythm 10 (1973), she played the Russian game in which one jabs the knife in between each finger at great pace attempting not to slice into one’s fingers. She used twenty knives and would move onto the next knife after she cut herself each time, tape recording the performance. She then replayed the tape, studying the sounds and tried to recreate the same performance again, making the same mistakes in tune with the first time around. She then listened intently to the double sounds and the painful cries the caused. Abramovic said, "Once you enter into the performance state you can push your body to do things you absolutely could never normally do,” on the state of consciousness she achieved while performing.






One of my favorite pieces of Abramovic is Rhythm 0 (1974). In this piece she sought to explore the relationship between performer and audience at an extreme extent. She had a table with 72 objects on top of it. These objects were made up of ones that could generate pleasure as well as ones that could inflict great pain. Some of the objects were scissors, a knife, a whip, and a gun and a single bullet. She then gave the audience six hours to do whatever they would to her, letting them do anything to manipulate her body. At first, the audience proceeded very cautiously and barely touched the more harmful objects. But, due to Abramovic’s impassiveness most likely, with time the audience grew colder and more malignant. Abramovic described the experience this way: “The experience I learned was that…if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed...I felt really violated: they cut 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 public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.”





Another mentionable work of Abramovic’s was Seven Easy Pieces (2005). It was presented at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. For seven consecutive nights for seven hours, Abramovic recreated the works of five performance artists that had been first done during the 60’s and 70’s. All of their performances were very difficult and draining, involving great concentration both physically and mentally from her. The pieces performed by Abramovic during Seven Easy Pieces are as follows: Bruce Nauman’s Body Pressure (1974), Vito Acconci’s Seedbed (1972), Valie Export’s Action Pants: Genital Panic (1969), Gina Pane’s The Conditioning (1973), Joseph Beuy’s How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965), Abramovic’s own Lips of Thomas (1975), and Abramovic’s own Entering the Other Side (2005).
The prizes and awards Abramovic has won are the Golden Lion Award, VLVII Venice Biennale (1997), the Niedersachsischer Kunstpreis (2003), the New York Dance and Performance Award (The Bessies) (2003), International Association of Art Critics, Best Show in a Commercial Gallery Award (2003), Honorary Doctor of Arts, University of Plymouth UK (2009).






“...as I entered the Mona Lisa room — you know, the painting is so removed from reality that any postcard seems more real.”
-Abramovic









“All my work is about emptying the mind, to come to a state of nonthinking. But to answer your question about cultural limits, I don’t have any feeling of nationality. I travelled so much that I really took the whole planet as a studio. And in a way I even think it’s too small.”
-Abramovic







“In my new work is based on the idea that what is important is less what you do than the state of mind you do it in. Then you must make enormous efforts to come to that state of mind. According to this, my new work deals with emptying my body: “Boat emptying, stream entering.” This means that you have to empty the body/boat to the point where you can really be connected with the fields of energy around you. I think that men and women in our Western culture are completely disconnected from that energy, and in my new work I want to make this connection possible.”
-Abramovic







“As an artist I want to be a bridge.”
-Abramovic






works cited:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Abramovi%C4%87

http://www.artfacts.net/index.php/pageType/newsInfo/newsID/3352/lang/1

http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=5207889

http://www.jca-online.com/abramovic.html

http://www.lacan.com/abramovic.htm

http://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Marina_Abramovi%C4%87/4E03122AC26348A1