Marina Abramovic-The Artist is Present, Clothed and Recreated, Unclothed

On Thursday, March 11, when  I went to MOMA to see the William Kentridge exhibit (which I discussed in the prior blog) I discovered that it was the first day of a "members only" preview of the new Marina Abramovic exhibit.  I knew getting a membership was a good idea!   So I took the opportunity to participate in yet another mind-expanding introduction to performance art.  The exhibition covers the forty odd years of  work by this very distinctive woman, born in Yugoslavia in 1946-so she is a contemporary of ours but her life is very different from the country mouse from Ithaca.

The actual performance art for The Artist is Present involves her sitting at a table in MOMA's atrium.  If members of the audience want to join her one can. I took a renegade (blurry) picture which is posted above.  "Presence" defines the experience.When I saw her, I was reminded of a favorite book of Ted's "Be Here Now" which encourages one to live in the moment.  Abramovic will sit in the atrium, motionless like this, until May 31 and if she succeeds it will be her longest performance ever which is saying something because she has challenged herself for these forty years.  The rest of the exhibit documents and recreates the history of her canon of performance art and is getting plenty of press.

Undoubtedly some of the buzz is because of the nudity of the artists as this YouTube/AP video illustrates.  I chose to not walk between the nude doorway...was it because I felt so fat next to the lithe models?  I was most interested in Luminosity in which a nude woman is perched on a wall, sitting on a bicycle seat like a human clock. She very slowly moves her arms from the 9 and 3 position to the 12 noon position.  I watched her diaphragm because this seems to be exceedingly hard on the body.  It made me think of a crucifixion.  There are reviews and commentary galore about this exhibit on the web now so if you want to see more just Google Marina Abramovic-The Artist is Present.  I don't know if this is great art, but I was very happy that I turned up at MOMA on the opening preview day and had the luxury of walking through a very uncrowded exhibition because the lines for this show are going to get very long.  And as a personal aside, I took some comfort in the fact the Abramovic now prefers to "perform" in a long dark dress and she may not have the same lithe body she did when she first did these works.  I can relate to her better as a peer when she is clothed.