Towards the late 1950s, as abstract art began to lose
impetus, many artists across the world began to embrace performance art.
Performance had been a feature of avant-garde art since around 1910, but
Marina Abramovic's work is typical of the aims of the new generation in her
eagerness to avoid traditional, object-based art materials (such as paint and
canvas), and to cut down the distance between the artist and the audience by
making her own body the medium. Born under Yugoslavia's repressive Communist
dictatorship, and raised by parents closely tied to the regime, Abramovic's
dramatic and dangerous performances often seem like cathartic responses to
these early experiences of power. She has produced a quantity of sculpture, but
she remains best known for performance, and she remains one of only a handful
of performance artists of her generation who have continued to perform late in
their career.
Marina Abramovic's work is typical of the ritualistic strain
in 1960s performance art. It often involves putting herself in grave danger and
performing lengthy, harmful routines that result in her being cut or burnt, or
enduring some privation. She views her art almost as a sacrificial and
religious rite, performed by herself for a congregation of viewers. And the
physical ordeals she endures form the basis for exploring such themes as trust,
endurance, cleansing, exhaustion, and departure.
We might interpret her work as having displaced art from
traditional media such as painting and sculpture, and moved it directly on to
her body. Yet far from conceiving it as simply a surface, she has said that she
thinks of the body as the "point of departure for any spiritual
development."
Between 1976 and 1988 she collaborated with the German-born
artist known as Ulay. The performances the pair created during
this time often exploited their duality to investigate ideas such as the
division between mind and body, nature and culture, active and passive
attitudes, and, of course, between male and female.
One of Abramovic’s most famous performance arts is Rhythm 0.
Abramovic was lying on a table and next to her on another table were 72 items
like, scissors, honey, band aids, blade, knives, etc. the spectators were
allowed to do whatever they wanted to do to her and there was also a sign which
said that the people would not be responsible for their actions. It was then
that the true nature of people came out. By the time the performance was over,
marina was covered with cuts, gashes and tears were coursing down her cheeks.
The moment she stood up and got down from the table, the participators fled
from the room. She has a moral or a purpose attached to every performance that
she stages. In this case it was the fact that though 90% of humans on this
planet are extremely cruel in nature when given free reign, they cannot stand
the fact they were able to inflict such torture on another person. They
realized that they can’t look themselves in the eye.
Marina Abramovic, according to me is an extremely optimistic
person. Even after what was inflicted on her by the participants, she did not
lose faith in the fact that people were a good bunch and still spent time
trying to convince them of the same fact. She tried to give as much love as she
could to them, with every atom of her being, as she had once quoted in an
interview.
It makes me feel good about the fact that there are people
like Marina Abramovic living in the world as she restores my faith in mankind.
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