"Walking Through Walls: Marina Abramovic's performance art" by Judith Thurman 2010

Marina Abramovic

This article looks at Marina Abramovic's life and the evolution of her performance art.  Soon to have a retrospective at MoMA, Abramovic is training performers to do recreations of some of her past works, and also participating in the exhibit herself, of course, Abramovic has created the idea for a new performance called "The Artist is Present."  In her work, Abramovic was greatly influenced by her upbringing.  Her mother was extremely stoic and expected her daughter to be the same.  Abramovic uses this learned stoicism to her advantage in that she has trained herself to tolerate considerable pain in the name of a performance.  Often seemingly masochistic, many of her performances, at least many of her older ones, were more "ordeal"-focused, similar to the work of many of her contemporaries.  In recent years, she has been criticized by some for reviving past performances.  People then question what makes her art different from a theatrical performance.  Performance art is often characterized by being completely in the moment and open to anything, with the artist having some particular jumping off point, but letting whatever happens happen.  Abramovic believes that it is important for new spectators to view and participate in her works.  She doesn't think that words on a page or a recording are an adequate way for people to look back on and understand her work.