"Art That Flows From a Will to Live": Marina Abramović, Performance Artist

by Jessica Testa 

[Marina Abramović (b. 1946 in Yugoslavia) is a pioneering performance artist, best known for her works that explore the physical limitations of the body, as well as the body’s potential as a vehicle to spiritual metamorphosis.  Born in Belgrade (now the capital of Serbia), Abramovic studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade from 1965 to 1970 and in Zagreb, Croatia, at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1972.

[("When people ask me where I am from, I never say Serbia,” Abramović declares.  “I always say I come from a country that no longer exists" [Sean O'Hagan, “Interview: Marina Abramović,” Guardian [New York] 2 Oct. 2010, Interview: Marina Abramović | Marina Abramović | The Guardian].  What became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was formed in 1918 after World War I and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, gaining recognition in 1922.  It became the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia after World War II in 1945, and dissolved into six independent republics in 1992.)

[She was among the first generation of performance artists of the 1970s, a group that often resorted to using their own bodies as an artistic medium.  Her works often explore extremes of sensation, and, frequently, the audience is invited to participate in the intense, and often exhausting, painful performances.  Aramović's presentations include sound, video, photography, language, and sculpture, in addition to using her body as the central medium for her work.

[She later regularly collaborated with German artist Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen, 1943-2020; German performance artist known for his ambitious conceptual works) on other performative works, exploring the capacities of the body, as well as constructions of gender and social systems in their pieces.  

[In 1976, following her marriage to Serbian performance and conceptual artist Neša Paripović (b. 1942), Abramović went to Amsterdam to give a performance and decided to move there permanently.  She divorced Paripović in 1976 (m. 1970) and began living with Ulay, with whom she worked for about twelve years.

[From 1990 to 1995, she was a visiting professor at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris and at the Berlin University of the Arts.  From 1992 to 1996. she also served as a visiting professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg and from 1997 to 2004, she was a professor for performance art at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Braunschweig.

[Abramović also began traveling around the world to perform, exploring the body and nature with Ulay as a means of achieving spiritual transformation, in locations ranging from the Gobi Desert to the Tibetan mountains, and the Great Wall of China (1988).  At the end of this project, her relationship with Ulay dissolved.  

[She has exhibited her work at the Venice Biennale, where she won a Golden Lion award in 1997 (and met Italian contemporary artist Paolo Canevari, b. 1963, whom she would later marry), and at Documenta in Kassel, the Whitney Biennial, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Art Basel in Switzerland, and the Kumamoto Museum of Contemporary Art in Kumamoto, Japan, among many other venues.

[Abramović and Canevari moved to New York in 2002 and married in 2006.  She bought an estate in upstate Hudson, a small city in the center of New York’s eastern border of with Massachusetts, that became her private residence and a meeting place for performance art.  Abramović divorced Canevari and currently lives and works in Amsterdam and New York City.

[Eleven years ago, I posted a two-part article entitled “Performance Art” (7 and 10 November 2013).  It was a short history and exegesis of the artform as I understood it (and it would be pertinent to this post), so I will republish my definition of performance art (slightly edited and reformatted) for readers who haven’t encountered this hybrid of theater and art (my characterization):

Also known as “live art,” “living art,” or “body art,” performance art exists at the conjunction of the worlds of art and theater.  Performance, as it’s often called, is the demonstration or execution of the ideas of Conceptual Art, defined as “art of which the material is the concept.”  (Other, earlier art influences include Dadaism, Futurism, Constructivism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and Pop Art.)  

Conceptual Art, which flourished between the mid-’50s to the mid-’70s, elevated ideas and the process of creation over product and technique, and insisted that art can’t be bought or sold.  Like performance art, it can’t be commodified and brought home for display.  

Accepted as a separate medium of artistic expression in 1970s, performance, however, defies precise definition, asserts RoseLee Goldberg (b. 1947), an art historian, critic, and curator who’s lectured at many institutions and schools and who wrote the most comprehensive texts on it.  (Goldberg’s Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present, originally published in 1979, was reissued in 2011 in an edition that brings the history of performance up to the first decade of the 21st century.)  

As performance artist Laurie Anderson (b. 1947), a composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings a variety of experimental music and art rock styles, puts it: “This is literally living art that continues to evolve and expand.” 

Except that it’s live art by artists, in fact, few practitioners will agree on what comprises performance art and the artists and writers about performance keep expanding the scope of the definition with each succeeding wave of experimentation and exploration.  By nature, performance art constantly changes and evolves, as the artists adopt and adapt new technologies and media, engulfing new ideas and concepts as they pursue their aims.  

The event might be performed only once (most common in the early years) or repeated several times, with or without a prepared script, improvised spontaneously or rehearsed over many months.  The works might be presented in solo performances or in groups, with lighting, music, or visuals made by the artists themselves or in collaboration with other artists.  Performances could take place in galleries, theaters, museums, streets, parking lots, public squares, parks, open fields, vacant lots, bars, night clubs, lofts, or any space the artist selects that’s suited to the piece.  

In general, however, in addition to being live, it’s also predominantly presentational and typically involves improvisation.  The artist-creator-performer, using her or his body as the primary artistic medium (either as canvas or as sculpture, or both), combines dance, music, drama, and often technology like film, video, projections, or computer imagery, as well as any other media that the artist can adapt and apply.  

Performance also encompasses behaviors outside the performing and visual arts like ritual, work activities, sports, and daily tasks.

[Because performance art is ephemeral, photos or videos are frequently the art objects displayed after the live performance and sold to subsidize the work and provide the artists with income.  They are also the only record of the art event that can be preserved or archived—with the caveat that the “liveness,” one of the fundamental criteria of performance art, is missing.

[(Note, incidentally, that despite my labeling performance art as a fusion of theater and art, Abramović has insisted: “To be a performance artist, you have to hate theatre.  Theatre is fake . . . .  The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real.  Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real” [O’Hagan].)

[Jessica Testa’s interview with Marina Abramović ran in the “Sunday Styles” section of the New York Times on 4 August 2024.  In addition to “Performance Art,” other posts on the subject on Rick On Theater are: “Bob Dylan, Performance Artist” by Kirk Woodward (8 January 2011); “Lady Gaga: Artist For Our Time” by Kirk Woodward (1 November 2011); “Penny Arcade: Two Performances” (15 November 2013); “Lady Gaga and Once” by Kirk Woodward (5 May 2014); "‘The Second Life of Performance’" by Katie Kitamura from T: The New York Times Style Magazine (10 January 2016)]

Marina Abramovic, still a performance artist at 77, talks about her desires to keep going.

Marina Abramovic stood and faced the ocean on Fire Island.

[Fire Island is the center islet of the barrier islands parallel to the South Shore (the Atlantic shore) of Long Island (though the name sometimes refers to all four of the small islands). It’s 32 miles long and ½ mile across at its widest point (9½ square miles in area) and lies off New York’s Suffolk County, the easternmost county on Long Island (and location of The Hamptons, the collection of villages—67 miles and 2 hours east of Fire Island—that are weekend and vacation homes to the arty and wealthy of New York City).

[Fire Island is a 2½-hour drive from New York City (though no cars are allowed on the island itself; one must park and take a ferry) and is a popular summer resort for New Yorkers, with an active LGBTQ community for which Fire Island is well known. There are fewer than 300 year-round residents and the population swells to 14,840 at the peak season. Many celebrities, from the entertainment world and other fields, have homes on Fire Island.]

For a long minute, her arms rose symmetrically from her sides until her body formed a T shape. Her long red dress was stark against the waves. Her palms faced forward.

Ms. Abramovic’s face was not visible, but it was conceivable that she was screaming. The performance artist once screamed for three hours, until she couldn’t anymore (“Freeing the Voice,” 1976 [Budapest]); once yelled into her lover’s reciprocating mouth for 15 minutes (“AAA-AAA,” 1978 [Amsterdam]); once persuaded hundreds of people in an Oslo park to shriek in homage to Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream” ([Ekeberg Park, Oslo; 15-25 August] 2013).

[The iconic composition The Scream (Skrik in Norwegian) by Munch (Norwegian, 1863-1944) exists in several versions.  The first painted rendering was made in 1893 and is in the National Museum of Norway in Oslo. A pastel version, also from 1893, is in Oslo’s Munch Museum. The second pastel version, from 1895, was sold in 2012 to a private collector. The second painted version dates from 1910 and is also in the Munch Museum. Munch also created a lithograph stone of The Scream in 1895 and made about four dozen prints, several of which survive.]

Perhaps now she was expressing rage at humanity’s spoiling of the planet — the rising seas turned into garbage patches. Years ago, she said, after a deadly tsunami in Southeast Asia [the 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, known as the Boxing Day Tsunami, that killed an estimated 225-230,000 people], she whipped the ocean 360 times, wanting to punish it [God Punishing (2005) in Phuket, Thailand, whipping the sea with hundreds of performers and reading poems at the first anniversary for those lost in the tsunami].

But no, Ms. Abramovic was not screaming at the ocean. At 77, she was trying to give it positive energy and “unconditional love as a way to heal,” she said in her artist’s statement for “Performance for the Oceans.” The new piece [May 2024] — an edition of three photographs to be auctioned in October by Christie’s in London [Frieze Art Fair, 9-13 October 2024)] — was made for the conservation charity Blue Marine Foundation.

Ms. Abramovic has long explored endurance and extremes, whether by sitting in the Museum of Modern Art for upward of 700 hours [The Artist Is Present, 14 March-31 May 2010] or walking across the Great Wall of China [The Lovers – The Great Wall Walk, 30 March-3 June 1988]. (Or, more recently, leading seven minutes of silence at a rowdy music festival [Seven Minutes of Collective Silence, Glastonbury Festival, near Pilton, Somerset, England, 24 June 2024].)

This year, she took the idea of endurance a step further. With an Austrian herbalist, Nonna Brenner, she introduced a line of products called the Marina Abramovic Longevity Method. They are tinctures made with vitamins and natural ingredients, like garlic and cranberry juice, to boost energy or support the immune system. (The instructions: “Take 50-60 drops two times a day — with food and water.” [This parenthetical insert from the online version is not part of the print edition.])

Immediately, some questioned whether the line, which promises “inside-out beauty,” was performance art. It was not. Ms. Abramovic, who survived a health emergency last year [see below, re: “pulmonary embolism”] — and who said she had worked with Dr. Brenner to treat her Lyme disease, including with leeches — wants to stay on this planet as long as possible, trash-filled oceans and all. “I’m not going anywhere until I’m 103,” she said.

“In American culture, when you’re old, it’s like you’re dirty, like something’s wrong with you,” said the artist, who was born in what was then Yugoslavia. “In Balkan culture, being old is actually great.”

This was the first thing Ms. Abramovic told me on a video call in June, while in Greece. We were supposed to talk about the ocean. We spoke more about the will to live. (They’re connected.) This conversation has been edited.

On Longevity

You say Americans are obsessed with staying young and living forever, but you’re also interested in living past 100. What’s the difference?

Every wrinkle is a threat in American culture. My idea with aging is to embrace the limits of the body. That you wake up in the morning, that you have pain, that you have arthritis, that you’re not flexible like you were before. Enjoying the limits and seeing how you can accept your body as it is. That’s the difference. Americans don’t accept their bodies as they are.

Personally, I’m a little afraid of living to 100. I don’t know what the planet is going to look like. You’re running toward it.

I really want to see aliens, finally, in my lifetime. Some years ago, I asked Richard Branson [English business magnate, founder of spaceflight corporation Virgin Galactic; b. 1950] if he could give me a one-way ticket to go up and not come back. I want to see what is behind all this. I want to see black holes. Who made the cosmos? I have the curiosity of a kid of 5 years old.

By the way, I think here’s how I’m going to look at 120: My nose is very big and my chin is glued together, and I will have one big hair growing out.

Humor about yourself is so important. We have to have a few jokes about this hell we’re living in.

Well, when your Longevity Method was announced, some people weren’t sure if it was serious.

I am completely smashed by the press. This is not new for me. If I read and took seriously people’s writing, I would not leave home.

I’ve worked with the body all my life. But first of all, I’m not the doctor. I’m just giving my name to Dr. Brenner in order to promote the product. Nobody knows about her. Everybody knows about me.

The products are drops for energy, allergies and the immune system. We are allergic to everything these days because of the way we’re eating food and how pollution is in the air. If you stabilize your immune system, and you don’t have allergies, and you have drops of energy, you’re doing fine. Nothing crazier than that.

You do seem healthy.

Every day I’m eating branzino, a grilled fish, with steamed vegetables. Nothing else. I don’t have dinner. I have a light breakfast, and then I eat around 2 o’clock. When you get older, you don’t need to eat so much because you’re not running around like crazy.

What keeps you up at night?

The news is always bad — every morning, one horror after another. Why are humans historically constantly at war? Why do we have violence? How is it possible that we never learned lessons? How is it possible we never learned simple things to forgive each other?

I think we need good news. In the Second World War, when everybody was painting the atrocity of the war, [Henri] Matisse [French Post-Impressionist artist; 1869-1954], for four years of the war, was only painting flowers. That’s what we need.

So you’re an optimist?

I always see the positive side. And mostly I’m right. Like, every breakup will look terrible in the moment. Actually, years later, you’re so lucky this person is not in your life.

Every day is a miracle. I wake up quite happy every morning. Not always — my life was really difficult. I’m only getting happy lately.

What makes you so happy lately?

That I’m alive. I am a little bit worried that I will not have enough time to do whatever I am interested in doing. I’m doing a big thing in Manchester [England] next year [Manchester International Festival, 1-31 July 2025]. It’s such a crazy project, I’ll just tell you the title: “Balkan Erotic Epic.” In Balkan culture, genitals were used in rituals to connect to the spirits and the gods.

It’s going to be such a scandal. Britain is so puritan. I can’t wait.

Are you going to appear naked?

I don’t know yet. When you have the naked body and you present it to the public, it’s not me anymore. If I’m fat, or with cellulite, or with sagging tits, who cares? I’m presenting a concept in that body.

Ask me something that you never asked anybody else before.

Since we’ve been talking about longevity, have you ever not wanted to be alive?

No. I always want to be alive. I had a very bad heartbreak [the break-up with Ulay in 1988]. It was the saddest thing in my life. But I was just crying. That’s it. And one day I woke up and I didn’t cry anymore.

On ‘A Good Death’

A few weeks later, Ms. Abramovic agreed to continue the conversation at her apartment in Manhattan. She showed me footage from the “7 Deaths of Maria Callas,” an opera she conceived that includes several video clips of Ms. Abramovic, with Willem Dafoe [stage and film actor; b. 1955] as her co-star, dying various painful deaths. [7 Deaths débuted on 27 July 2021 at Munich’s Bavarian State Opera (Bayerische Staatsoper).]

She showed me photos taken last year in a hospital, where she was treated for a life-threatening pulmonary embolism [May 2023]: images of the blood clots removed from her body during surgery and of her first time walking again after being in a coma. (For when she needs it, there is still a cane in her entryway, next to a framed photograph of the German dancer Pina Bausch. [See note with above parenthetical comment.])

After her discharge, she couldn’t travel by airplane for some time. So she took a boat to Europe, developing a new appreciation for the scale of the ocean. “What’s your Plan B, by the way?” she asked, referring to the day disaster strikes New York and its citizens need to flee. (Her plan is Australia; she has a permanent visa.)

When I arrived at the apartment, a 27-year-old performance artist mentored by Ms. Abramovic was just leaving. The artist, Miles Greenberg [Canadian performance artist and sculptor; b. 1997], asked if he could bring her back any gifts from his summer travels. She requested a “supernatural story.” She is interested in the mysticism — like crystals and numerology — and in 2016 won several bets with friends after her horoscope reader predicted that Donald J. Trump would win the election. (The horoscope reader said he would lose in 2024.)

After Mr. Greenberg left, she explained that she met him when he was 17.

“I don’t have any contact with anyone in my generation,” Ms. Abramovic said. “They’re so boring and depressed.”

So you don’t have any friends your age?

No. The oldest ones are 55 or 60. But not 77. They’re half-dead, they’re always complaining, they’re always sick.

What do you do for fun?

I always try to see life through a child’s eyes. I don’t take drugs, and I don’t drink. I love chocolate. But I don’t need to drink to be funny. I think I’m hilarious. I think I should do stand-up comedy.

Did your perspective on life change with your health scare last year?

Yes, oh my God. I have no reason to be depressed. I spent too much time on my broken heart. What a waste.

One of the reasons that I think survived was everything that I learned through performance about pain, about endurance. Last year was the most physical pain I had in my entire life. I could not move, for six weeks, my little finger. The other physical pain I could control. This was something uncontrollable. You can’t control death.

I read that you planned your own funeral many years ago [Keynote Address, 30 June 2015; Marina Abramović: In Residence, Kaldor Public Art Projects, Sydney, Australia, 24 June-5 July 2015].

After Susan Sontag’s funeral, I was so discouraged. I want a big celebration. Nobody wears black, only bright colors. I had a crazy life, and I want to have a good death.

[Writer, critic, and public intellectual Sontag (b. 1933) died in New York on 28 December 2004, but according to her wishes, she was buried in Paris.  Her funeral was in Montmartre on 17 January 2005.]

Do you think you’re fixated on death?

No! I just wanted to stop being afraid of it.

[Jessica Testa is a New York Times reporter covering the worlds of style and fashion.]