The Artistic Influence of Abramović: “The Grandmother of Performance Art”

Today Marina Abramović is known as “the grandmother of performance art,” due to her role as a pioneer of the use of performance art as a visual arts medium. Abramović began her career in performance in 1973, when she was already in her late twenties. Before that, as a student of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Abramović explored her interest in the body through paintings influenced by the abstract forms of Picasso (image 1). However, Abramović quickly found herself frustrated by the limits of expression in painting, and upon her exposure to the performance art medium while at school in Zagreb, her works became increasingly immaterial.

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Image 1. Abramović at the opening of an exhibition of her abstract cloud paintings. c. 1970, Belgrade, Serbia. During this time she painted primarily abstract works of clouds, voluptuous women, and car crashes.

 

Image 2. More information on Marcel Duchamp is available here.

Abramović cites Marcel Duchamp and Dada (image 2), as well as the Fluxus movement, as being immensely influential on her work. In the 1960s George Maciunas started Fluxus, also directly influenced by Duchamp’s ready-mades, and Dada performances. Fluxus called for  a living art outside the traditional gallery setting.

Fluxus and Dada both advocated art of experience, in which the embrace of chance, and an emphasis on audience interaction was crucial towards ridding the world of the “dead” art found in galleries and institutions.

 

“I have arrived at the conclusion that…the performance has no meaning without the public because, as Duchamp said it is the public that completes the work of art. In the case of performance, I would say that public and performer are not only complimentary but almost inseparable.”

-Abramović on the influence of Duchamp in her emphasis on audience interaction.

Yoko Ono is one such Fluxus artist who was working in New York in the 1970s, and whose emphasis on the role of the audience, and challenge of passive viewership, is paralleled in Abramović’s Rhythms series of 1973-74. In particular, Ono’s Cut Piece (1964) (image 3) and Abramović’s Rhythm 0 (1974) (image 4) emphasize a shared interest in the use of their own bodies as victims to chance to enforce active instead of passive viewership.

Image 3. Yoko Ono, Cut Piece, 1964. Performance. Yamaichi Concert Hall, Kyoto, Japan.  Video from this performance available here.

 

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Image 4. Marina Abramović, Rhythm 0, 1974. Performance. 6 hours. Studio Mona, Naples, Italy. Video about this performance available here.

 

Since Abramović began her performance career forty years ago, she has become one of the most influential performance artists in history for her use of her own body as both the subject and the medium in performances which test her physical end mental endurance, while also emphasizing audience interaction.


For more information about Dada or Fluxus, follow the links below.

Learn more about Dada here.

 

Learn more about the Fluxus movement and Fluxus Happenings here.

 

Abramović in The Context of the 1960s and 1970s

Performance and Body Art in the 1970s:

From the end of the 1960s forward, an interest in “body” art emerged, in which both male and female artists turned to the “isolated physical self,” sacrificing themselves to risky and distressing actions as a means to shock their audiences and to challenge commodification of art by museums and galleries. During this period of political and social activism, Marina Abramović, along with Carolee Schneemann, Vito Acconci, Yoko Ono, and other artists, turned to the physical presence of the body in performance and body art as an attempt to jolt the viewer from their traditional role of passivity. Performance through the medium of the body became a place to acknowledge issues linked to women’s agency, as well as issues of race, sexuality, and otherness. This heightened interest in performance emerged along with the influence of Fluxus, started by George Maciunas in the 1960s, in which artists embraced chance and audience interaction as a means to “purge the world of dead art.”

Duration:

Durational works  became increasingly popular in the 1970s for their rejection of traditional authorship or regularity, in direct opposition to the commodity culture related to the gallery or institution. These durational works were continuously in flux and therefore unpredictable and did not fit within a traditional gallery setting. Since the 1970s, Abramović has been a pioneer for the use of performance as a visual art form, using the body and duration as a means to test her mental and physical limits. In these durational works, such as her Rhythms series (1973-74) or Lips of Thomas (1975) (video available here), the long periods of time are used to push Abramović’s mental and physical limits, while also challenging the passivity of the viewer, who is made increasingly uncomfortable in watching the artist’s own suffering.

For more details, an informative, concise overview of performance in the 1960s and 1970s is available on the Walker Art Center’s website here.

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Marina Abramović, Rhythm 0 (1974): In this performance Abramović stood passively in a gallery for 6 hours during which time her audience had the opportunity to do whatever they wished with her body, using any of 72 objects she provided. Over the 6 hour period her audience became increasingly aggressive, finally ending when one member placed a gun to Abramovic’s neck.

 

Marina Abramović, Lips of Thomas (1975). In this piece, over two hours, a naked Abramović, eats a pound of honey, drinks a liter of red wine, carves a five-pointed communist star into her abdomen, then whips herself until she can’t bear it. The brutality of the piece forces the viewer to suffer along with the suffering of the artist.

 

Follow the links below to learn about other major body art and performance artists of the 1960s and 1970s: 

Carolee Schneemann:
In Schneemann’s 1975 Interior Scroll Schneemann, after applying paint to her face and body, and enacting a series of “life model action poses,” slowly drew a scroll of paper from her vagina and read aloud from it. By embracing core imagery through the presentation of her naked body, Schneemann rejected the phallus in favor of female sexual empowerment: “Using my body as an extension of my painting-constructions challenged and threatened the psychic territorial power lines by which women, in 1963, were admitted to the Art Stud Club, so long as they behaved enough like the men, and did work clearly in the traditions and pathways hacked out by men.”

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Carolee Schneemann, Interior Scroll, 1975. Performance.

Vito Acconci:
In 1971 Vito Acconci lay hidden under a wooden ramp in New York’s Sonnabend Gallery, and intermittently masturbated, basing his sexual fantasies off of the sounds of the gallery visitors above him. Acconci expressed these fantasies aloud, where they were then projected through speakers into the gallery space. The piece emphasizes the vital role of the viewer, whose actions directly influence the development of the work. The visitors are taken out of a role of passivity and instead are unexpectedly objectified by Acconci’s actions below the ramp.

Vito Acconci, Seedbed, 1972. Performance. Sonnabend Gallery, New York. 10 minutes.

Yoko Ono:

Another female artist who was incorporating the viewer as a vital component in performance art in the 1960s and 1970s is Yoko Ono. In 1964 Ono performed Cut Piece, in which Ono sat passively on a stage, fully clothed, and invited her audience members to mount the stage and cut off a piece of her clothing using the scissors she placed on the floor beside her. This performance reflects Ono’s participation in the Fluxus movement, through her emphasis on audience interaction. The performance is dependent on the actions and reactions of her viewers, and therefore is unpredictable and constantly in flux.

Yoko Ono Cut Piece
Yoko Ono, Cut Piece, 1964 Performance. Yamaichi Concert Hall, Kyoto, Japan.

 

 

Useful Links

Below is a list of useful links pertaining to the life and works of Marina Abramović, as well as about performance and body art in general.


 

MoMA Lecture Series:The Feminist Future: Marina Abramović:
The following video is from a panel discussion at MoMA about body, sexuality, and gender. Marina Abramović is one of the panelists discussing her own use of the body and sexuality in her performance art. She begins by clarifying that she does not want to be defined as a feminist artist, or even a woman artist, but just as artist.

 http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/videos/16/166

Art21, Marina Abramović Featured in Art in the Twenty-First Century, Season 6 (2012), Art in the Twenty-First Century, Season 6 (2012)

Art21 on Marina Abramović:
For those interested in learning more about  Marina Abramović, Art21 has published a very useful bio and mini-documentary discussing the life and works of Abramović. You can find the full article and video here.

 

 

MoMA Explanation of Imponderabilia:
http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/190/1974

My Personal Favorite Work by Abramović

Imponderabilia
Marina Abramović and Ulay, Imponderabilia, 1977, Galleria Communale d’Arte Moderna, Bologna, Italy

 

My personal favorite performance by Marina Abramović: Imponderabilia (1977):

 

In 1976 Abramović met Ulay, and over the next decade they collaborated in a series of relational performances during which they referred to themselves as a collective, androgynous being called “Ulay-Abramović.” In these works Abramović and Ulay questioned the socially defined identities of both femininity and masculinity, while also continuing to test their limits. These performances by Abramović and Ulay were not meant to be pleasing spectacles, but rather to disturb the viewer from a role of passivity.

 

In their 1977 performance, Imponderabilia, Abramović and Ulay stood as human doorposts on either side of the narrow entrance to the Galleria Communale d’Arte Moderna, in Bologna, Italy. The narrowness of the space forced visitors to squeeze sideways between them, forced to choose whether to face the naked Ulay or naked Abramović in order to enter the museum. Upon viewing the filmed footage from this performance, one notes that what stands out the most in this piece is not the vulnerability of the two naked artists, but rather the vulnerability and uncertainty of the visitors. Each person, upon reaching the entrance, was forced to decide first, whether they would enter the museum, and next, whether they would face the naked Abramović or the naked Ulay. By placing these decisions in the hands of the viewer, Imponderabilia becomes a performance of reflection on the subsequent reactions and interactions of the spectators. This piece also reflects Abramović and Ulay’s shared interest in duration, as the piece was performed in shifts, repeated throughout the exhibition, for a total of 700 hours.

Marina Abramović and Ulay, Imponderabilia, 1977.

 

Video of the Imponderabilia performance is available here.

Annotated Bibliography

Below is a list of the top ten most relevant print and online resources that I have found in researching the life and performance art of Marina Abramović, as well as about performance and body art in general:

  1. Abramović, Marina, Biesenbach, Klaus, and Museum of Modern Art. Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010.

This exhibition catalogue was published in conjunction with Marina Abramović’s performance The Artist is Present, held at the Museum of Modern Art in 2010. The catalogue includes essays by Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art, Klaus Biesenbach, as well as four other scholars who analyze Marina Abramović’s performances through the themes of time, duration, and risk. The book covers over forty years of Abramović’s career, from her early sound environments and installations, to her current body art performances.

  1. Jones, Amelia.Body Art/performing the Subject. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.

This book by Amelia Jones is a seminal text about performance and body art from the 1960s and 1970s and their influence on the body art of the present. In her discussion, Jones applies feminism, queer theory, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and literary theory in order to provide a diverse perspective to the history, influences and goals of body art performances from the 1950s onward.

  1. Dezeuze, Anna.The ‘do-it-yourself’ Artwork: Participation from Fluxus to New Media. Rethinking Art’s Histories. Manchester, UK: New York: Manchester University Press; Distributed in the United States by Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

This anthology by Anna Dezeuze emphasizes the crucial role of the spectator through a discussion of various practices including happenings, installations, and performances from the 1950s to today. These essays provide a thorough historical background to the development of performance art from the 1950s to present, while also discussing theory on viewership and identity. Frazer Ward’s essay “Marina Abramović: approaching zero,” and Anna Dezeuze’s essay “Play, Ritual, and Politics: transitional artworks in the 1960s,” are particularly useful in their discusses of the themes of Abramović’s performance art, as well as work of other artists in the 1960s and 1970s.

  1. Westcott, James.When Marina Abramović Dies: A Biography. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2010.

This biographical history of Marina Abramović thoroughly covers Abramović’s life from her early beginnings in Yugoslavia; to her increasing success as one of the contemporary art world’s most influential performance artists. Westcott discusses not only Abramović’s seminal performance works, but also thoroughly covers Abramović’s influential beginnings in Yugoslavia from 1946 to 1975, with particular interest in her tremulous relationship with her parents.

  1. Crow, Thomas (1996).The Rise of the Sixties: American and European art in the era of dissent(Perspectives (Harry N. Abrams, Inc.)). New York, N.Y.: Harry N. Abrams.

This book by Thomas Crow provides an extensive overview of the art and major social and political movements of the 1960s and 1970s both in the United States and in Europe. Crow leads the reader along a timeline following formative events and movements of the period, and neatly parallels this history with artists and artworks whose evolutions reflect their historical context.

  1. Thurman, Judith. “Walking Through Walls: Marina Abramović’s Performance Art.”The New Yorker. March 8, 2010. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/03/08/walking-through-walls.

This fascinating article by Judith Thurman was written in preparation for Abramović’s then upcoming MoMA retrospective, The Artist is Present (2010). However, this article not only discusses the upcoming exhibition, but provides an in-depth account of Abramović’s background (both her personal history and performance history), starting with her upbringing in former-Yugoslavia under strict Partisan war-hero parents, and moving forward to give a detailed overview of Abramović major performances from 1973 to present (2010).

  1. Reckitt, Helena, and Phelan, Peggy. Art and Feminism. Themes and Movements. London; New York, NY: Phaidon, 2001.

This book is a monumental resource for anyone interested in learning not just about Marina Abramović, but also about over 150 other major female artists. Art and Feminism is organized thematically, and includes images, brief essays and interviews, as well as an entire section dedicated to social, political and theoretical essays by a variety of top feminist scholars.

  1. Jones, A. (1997). “Presence” in Absentia: Experiencing Performance as Documentation.Art Journal, 56(4), 11-18.

This article by art historian Amelia Jones, focuses on the issue of ephemerality in performance art, and its subsequent reliance on documentation. Jones, in her overview of performance art from the 1960s to present, includes detailed case studies of major performance and body artists including Marina Abramović, Carolee Schneemann, and Yayoi Kusama, in which she analyzes their performances in relationship to issues of agency, objectivity, presence, and documentation.

  1. Goldberg, RoseLee.Performance: Live Art since 1960. New York: Harry N. Abrams Publishers, 1998.

In this survey of performance art from the 1960s to present (1998), RoseLee Goldberg provides an in-depth analysis of major movements and artists definitive of performance art. Thematic sections cover topics relevant to the work of Marina Abramović (who is discussed in detail, however, is not the sole focus of the book) such as body, politics, theater, feminism, and multiculturalism, and Goldberg pairs her discussion of these themes with fantastic photographs that illustrate her case studies.

  1. Abramović, Marina, Thompson, Chris, and Weslien, Katarina. “Pure Raw: Performance, Pedagogy, and (Re)presentation.”PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 28, no. 1 (2006): 29-50.

In this extensive interview with Abramović, Chris Thompson and Katarina Weslien begin by providing a concise but detailed biography of Abramović, followed by an in-depth discussion with the artist in which they discuss her attraction to performance as a living medium, the use of her own body, the element of risk and chance, as well as the defining element of duration recurring in her performance works. The dialogue is grounded in examples from a multitude of Abramović’s performance works from the 1970s to today.

 

 

 

Marina Abramović (Brief Biography)

Marina portrait

Marina Abramović (b.1946, Belgrade, Serbia)

Marina Abramović was born in 1946 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Her parents were Partisan war heroes who helped fight the Nazis in World War II and held high positions in the communist government. Abramović’s upbringing by her parents was extremely strict, enforcing a 10 pm curfew for Abramović into her twenties.  She began her career in performance art in the early 1970s, when she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, and many of her early works were a form of rebellion to her oppressive communist upbringing. Abramović’s desire for unrestricted expression of her mental and physical self led her into increasingly conceptual work, gradually moving into sound installations before enacting her first performance piece, Rhythm 10 at the Edinburgh Festival in 1973. Over the next year Abramović performed four more pieces, in a series called Rhythms, in which she tested the psychological and physical limitations of her own body, as well as the consciousness of her audience.

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Marina Abramović, Rhythm 10, 1973, 1 hour. Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Villa Borghese, Rome.

Over the past forty years, Abramović has used her body as a tool to test both physical and emotional limits. At the same time that Abramović explores her own physical and psychological limitations, she also challenges passive viewership. Abramović’s performances are characterized by endurance and pain, as well as by repetition, duration, and an emphasis on audience interaction.

 


 

Today Abramović is considered one of the most influential figures in the history of performance art, and has been dubbed “the grandmother of performance art.” She is currently in the process of opening her very own Marina Abramović Institute in Hudson, NY. At the MAI, Abramović’s long-durational approach to performance (defined on the MAI website as 6 hours or more), called the Abramović Method, will be taught to the public in order to preserve the legacy of performance art. It is estimated to officially open in 2015. You can visit the official MAI website here.

Architectural rendering of the Marina Abramović Institute in Hudson, NY. Currently under construction.

Marina Abramović and the Performative Body

(Marina Abramović of 1970s Presentation)

 

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 Rhythm 10
1973
1 hour.

 

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Rhythm 5
1974
1 1/2 hours.

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Rhythm 2
1974
7 hours.

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Rhythm 4
1974
45 minutes.

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Rhythm 0
1974
6 Hours.

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Ulay And Abramović:
Collaborative Performances

 

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Marina Abramović Youtube Channel

For more information on the life and works of Marina Abramović, visit my Marina Abramović Youtube channel here.

Top 5 Video Picks:

1. In Your Face: Interview: Marina Abramović:
This is a fascinating interview with Abramović. She talks about everything from her beginnings as a performance artist, her collaboration and relationship with fellow artist Ulay, her celebrity collaborations, to her current performance works and upcoming Marina Abramović Institute. This is a wonderful video whether you have just heard of Abramović, or you have studied her in depth and are interested her perspective on how she and her work has changed since the 1970s.

2. Marina and Ulay Archival:
In 1976 Abramovicć met German artist Ulay, and for the next decade, until they dramatically parted ways in 1988, they collaborated in a series of performance works where they presented themselves as a single, androgynous being called Ulay-Abramović. This was a formative decade for Abramović, and in this video she discusses both her performance work leading up to when she first met Ulay, as well as the themes and ideas that developed during their time together. This video spans their entire relationship together leading up to Abramović’s 2010 retrospective at MoMA, The Artist is Present, where Ulay made a surprise appearance.

3. Body Art: Meet Performance Artist Marina Abramović:
While be warned, this video is slightly corny (it is from an interview conducted for CBS Sunday Morning), it does provide a nice overview of the life and work of Abramović, from her childhood in Belgrade, up to her present endeavors with the Marina Abramović Institute.

4.Marina Abramović: Embracing Fashion | “Exclusive” | Art21:
The premise of this video is a discussion with Abramović about her current love of designer fashion, a fact that has earned her criticism from other artists and art critics as a sign of “selling out.” However, this video by Art21 is much more than a discussion of fashion. This video provides a great, concise overview of Abramović’s early performance works of the 70s and 80s, including phenomenal video clips from the performances so that you don’t need to rely solely on written descriptions of the works.

5. Marina Abramović: The Body as Medium:
For years Abramović studied drawing and painting, first at the institute in Belgrade, and then in Zagreb, where she finally was exposed to performance. In this short video, Abramović talks about when she first discovered the medium of performance and use of the body. It includes images of her early paintings, which were often of abstract clouds, voluptuous women, or car crashes.

 

Pushing One’s Mental and Physical Boundaries: A Career in Performance

Over the past forty years Marina Abramović has used her body as a tool to test both physical and emotional limits in her performances. At the same time that Abramović explores her own physical and psychological limitations, she is also challenging the traditionally passive role of viewer.

Below is a video which provides a useful overview of Abramović’s career, from her beginning in performance with the Rhythm Series in 1973, to her 2010 retrospective at the MoMA, The Artist is Present.

Abramović & Ulay

The Confrontation of Sexual Difference: Ulay/Abramović

Abramović and Ulay c.1976

 

In 1976 Abramović met West-German artist, Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen), and over the next decade Abramović and Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen) collaborated in a series of relational performances during which they referred to themselves as a collective, androgynous being. In these collaborative works Abramović and Ulay questioned the socially defined identities of both femininity and masculinity, and encouraged viewers to participate through their own exploration of gender relationships.


 

Relation in Time (1977)

In 1977 Abramović and Ulay performed Relation in Time in Bologna, Italy, where they sat back to back, tied together by their ponytails. After sixteen hours of sitting silent and barely moving, they allowed the public to enter the room so that Abramović and Ulay could see if they could use the energy of the public to push their limits even further.

 

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1. Marina Abramović and Ulay Relation in Time, 1977 Studio G7, Bologna

Below is a film explaining the Registration in Time performance, along with video documentation of the piece.


Relation in Space (1976)

In Relation in Space (1976), Abramović and Ulay, both naked, repeatedly ran into each other at an increasing pace, until after an hour and a half they were smacking into one another so hard that Abramović was being thrown to the ground (image 2).

2. Marina Abramović and Ulay, Relation in Space, 1976. Performane at Venice Biennale.

 


Imponderabilia (1977)

In Imponderabilia, Abramović and Ulay, stood as human doorposts on either side of the narrow entrance to the museum. The narrowness of the space forced visitors to squeeze sideways between them, having to choose whether to face the naked Ulay or naked Abramović (image 3). The focus of the performance is not to emphasize the vulnerability of the nude bodies of Abramović and Ulay, but rather the reactions of the visitors.

 

3. Marina Abramović and Ulay. Imponderabilia, 1977 Performance at the Galleria Communale d’Arte, Bologna, Italy.

Below is video documentation of Imponderabilia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgeF7tOks4s


Breathing In, Breathing Out (1977)

Breathing In, Breathing Out was performed in 1977 in Belgrade. For this piece, which lasted 19 minutes, Abramović and Ulay plugged their noses with cigarette filters, then pressed their mouths together, passing their breath back and forth for as long as possible (image 4). This piece, through the exchange of one breath, is representative of Abramović and Ulay’s interest in presenting themselves as one, androgynous being.

4. Breathing In, Breathing Out, 1977.

Below is a 30 second clip from Breathing In, Breathing Out:

 


 AAA-AAA (1978)

In this performance Abramović and Ulay stand opposite of each other and make long sounds with their mouths open. Gradually, they move closer and closer to one another, until eventually they are yelling directly into each others open mouths (image 5). The performance, which lasted 15 minutes, continued until both artist’s voices were  out of sync and failing from the continuous yelling. This piece demonstrates their interest in endurance and duration, as well as an exploration of aggression between physically present figures, one male and one female.

5. Marina Abramović and Ulay, AAA-AAA, 1978.

Below is a ten-minute film explaining the performance AAA-AAA, including video documentation of the performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAIfLnQ26JY


Nightsea Crossing (1981-1987)

In Nightsea Crossing, a series of twenty-two performances between 1981 and 1987. In these performances, Abramović and fellow artist, Uwe Laysiepen, or Ulay, sat silently across from each other in chairs for seven hours a day (image 6). Through this series of performances Abramović and Ulay attempted to portray the continuation of inner consciousness despite exterior motionlessness.

6. Marina Abramović and Ulay, Nightsea Crossing, 1981-87