Marina Avramovich - a retrospective
at the Royal Academy of Arts, LondonThis was one of those unforgettable exhibition experiences. Abramovic is such a colossal figure, and as the RA review pointed out something of a matryhoshka figure: an endurance artist within a performance artist within one of the most significant art practitioners of the 20th and 21st centuries. This exhibition collates 50 years of work.
From early on, her body became her primary medium, but so did the malleability of time. She has consistently pushed at boundaries - physical, geographic, of identity - with work performed within the confines of the clock.
While her body is the locus of the work, it robustly resists the male gaze, antagonising its assumptions and entitlement.
Often, her work is about pain but it's a different kind of pain to our usual associations. Usually narratives of pain are embedded in our ideas of illness and immobility, which suggest a lack of control. Abramovic's pain has autonomy, it is created and directed by her. She suffers for her art, but also for the viewer. Consequently, our complicity is part of the process. From the loaded gun in Rhythm O, to the choreomania of Freeing the Body, which involved dancing for hours to African drums until collapsing, Abramovic's own complicity is the total obliteration of limits.
Four works are performed in the galleriees, not by Abramovic herself but by a new generation of artists trained by Abramovic in the Marina Abramovic method to perform her past works. Other pieces are represented by a substantial body of films and photographs, together with installations, sculptures and drawings. Key concepts recur - spirituality, pain, the connectedness of the human and non-human.
Public Participation:
From the outset Abramovic pushed the concept of the relationship between art, artist and the viewer further, making the audience a fundamental participant in her work. The energy flow between artist and audience is a vital condition of her performances: 'I cannot do anything without an audience, I need their energy'.
The Artist is Present (2010)
During this performance Abramovic sat for eight hours a day for three months at a table in the atrium of MoMA in New York. Members of the public were invited to sit silently opposite the artist for the duration of their choosing, their gazes meeting. Footage of the sitters reveals the extent to which the experience impacted them, their charged and often highly emotional reactions speaking to the basic human need for connection. A symbiotic link, an exchange of energy were created, things that are vital to fuel a work of durational art.
Public Participation II:Rhythm 0 (1974) saw Abramovic present herself as an object to be acted upon, as she stood motionless for eight hours alongside a table of 72 items referencing pain and pleasure, for the public to use on her as they wished. Initially hesitant, some audience members became increasingly violent, stripping the artist to her wait, cutting her skin, and even holding a gun to her neck. When the performance ended and Abramovic moved, the public fled the galleries. The trauma of the experience turned a section of the artist's hair white.
The 72 objects - pleasure and pain - I could not fit them all in one shot.
She stood motionless and unspeaking for six hours. The tone shifted from curious bystanders offering her flowers to stripping her to the waist, sexually abusing her and someone pointing a loaded gun at the artist. Quite an indictment of some people.
I found this the most shocking: the opportunity to sexually abuse in public, with 'permission' - this man should have been put in jail.
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In both The Artist is Present and Rhythm 0, the audience's emotions were projected onto the artist; what differed were the tools and framing she provided. The journey between these two performances, from physical interaction and aggression to stillness and spiritual connection, define the arc of Abramovic's practice. What is also interesting is the difference in the audience in these two performances: thirty six years after Rhythm 0, The Artist was Present attracted admirers (including Bjorg and Lou Reed) well-versed in what she had endured in the name of art who were appreciative and who wanted to connect with her, rather than exhibit their wish and capacity for cruelty.
Communist Body:
Abramovic was born in communist Yogoslavia. Her parents had been partisan fighters in WWII and, feted as heroes, were rewarded with coveted state jobs. The strictures of communist ideology - from extreme physical discipline to restricted freedom of speech - shaped Abranovic's early years and her subsequent formation as an artist.
Abranovic often weaves elements of her personal biography into her work. The five-pointed star appears in many early pieces, as she explored communist ideology and its impact on herself and others. In Rhythm 5 (19740) this took the form of a wooden structure which was set alight as she lay within it. The resultant dense smoke was suffocating and caused the artist to faint. The following year she incised a star into her abdomen as part of the performance Lips of Thomas, leaving behind an indelible scar on her body.
Balkan Baroque, 1997, (performance, 4 days 6 hours)
Abramovic left Belgrade in 1976 but continued to feel a close tie to the region. Her perception of the Balkan identity as bound up in extremes of violence and eroticism often influenced her later work. At the Venice Biennale in 1997 she presented Balkan Baroque, her most complex and multifaceted reflection on her homeland.
Conceived in response to the decade's violent conflict in the Balkans, following the disintegration of Yugoslavia that began in 1991, she performed a ritual, if hopeless, act of cleansing the horrors of war - a public act of mourning. She attempted to wash clean a pile of bloodied bones. This act was accompanied by projections of the artist flanked by her parents, recounting a gruesome folk story and then dancing to a suggestive Balkan song. This went on for a back-breakingly 716 hours. The performance caused a sensation and was awarded the Golden Lion.
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We then went through the portal that has figured in every newspaper article written about the exhibition, and yes, the space between the two naked people is very narrow and you can't help but touch them as you go through.
Body Limits:
From the moment of her first performance, Rhythm 10 in 1973, Abramovich felt the power of using her body to create art: 'I knew then that this was my tool, the body was my tool'. Against a backdrop of existentialist thought, and alongside other contemporary artists, Abramovic explored her physical limits through her work, describing the pain she endured during these early performances not as the goal of the work, but as a method to experience extreme mental clarity and presence. These earlhy works have an intensely emotive quality, giving catharctic expression to universal human experiences of pain, anger and fear, and quickly established Abramovic as the leading performance artist of her generation.
In 1975, Abramovic met fellow artist Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen) and the two experienced an instant emotional and artistic connection. In Ulay, Abramovic found a partner equally interested in pushing the body's limits to create art. Together they made work that considered the relationship between the self and the other, their symbiotic connection growing to the point that it became what they called 'That Self', an entity that produced a series of works delving into 'That Self'. Of these Rest Energy (1980) viscerally demonstrates the extreme trust their partnership depended on.
Rest Energy (1980)
In Rest Energy, each gripped a taut crossbow the arrow poinring at Abramovic's heart, and small microphones were used to amplify their heartbeats. It lasted over four minutes, but Abramovic declared that it felt like 'forever', its duration telescoped in sensation and emotion.
Absence of the Body:
On June 1988, Abramovic and Ulay met on the Great Wall of China, having walked towards each other for ninety days from opposite ends. They had originally planed to marry at this meeting opint, but by the time Chinese authorities had granted them permission for the performance, their relationship had deteriorated. Instead the work became a ritualised separation, formally ending their personal and creative partnership.
The Sun and the Moon, (1987)
In the preceding years, Abramovic and Ulay had turned towards making art that did not directly use their bodies. The body-scale vases of The Sun and the Moon are opposites: one as as matte and unreflective as the other is shiny and reflective. They speak to themes of the duality and symbiosis present in many of the couple's work, yet also marked the breakdown of their artistic and personal connections.
Energy from Nature:
Sleeping Under the Banyan Tree, 2010 (performance for video, no sound, 56 minutes 43 seconds)
During the late 1980s and 1990s, Abramovic considered how to convey energetic interactions between matter and immaterial energy directly to the audience. The Transitory Objects for Human Use are a series of works that for the first time make the audience the central participant of the artwork without requiring the presence of the artist. Rather than sculptures or items of furniture, the Transitory Objects act as tools allowing viewers to access the energy and curative power of the crystals and metal that form them, based on traditional Chinese medicine's correspondences between minerals and parts of the body. Through years of use, the surface of these objects has become worn and polished bearing witness to the passage of bodies over time.
Members of the audience were invited to use these objects as you can see from the picture above and the three below
Shoes for Departure, 1991-92, (quartz crystal) . Directions: Enter the shoes with bare feet, eyes, closed, motionless. Depart.
Coming and Going:
Since her early performances, Abramovic has understood the importance of photographic and video documentation in giving performance an afterlife, even beyond the artist's lifespan. In recent years she has explored innovative forms of preservation. For Five Stages of Maya Dance (2013/16) she 'performed to camera' the extremes of human expression. These photographs were carved in negative relief on alabaster slabs, turning them into performative sculptural objects that memorialise the artist's performance yet transform into rough stone when approached.
The image really did completely disappear once you got close - it was amazing.
We were not allowed to photograph the next live installation, but you can see it reflected on the left-hand side of this photograph of the artist. (Artist Portrait with a Candle, 2012).
The installation we were not allowed to photograph, (Nude with Skeleton, 2002, 2023), a big rectangular box, on the side a video projection of Abramovic's performance where she is lying down with a skeleton placed on top of her. At the top of the box, the live performance, an artist, with a skeleton placed on top of her.
The theme of death has been a frequent undercurrent in Abramovic's art, particularly in her recent works, as she considers the ultimate physical transition that all of us will undergo: from life to death. As the artist has stated: 'When death knocks on my door, I want to enter this last experience very consciously and free from fear, bitterness and anger. It is the last experience that we can have in our lives'.
Four Crosses, 2019, (corian, aluminium, iron and oak with LED panels)
Bed for Dead Spirits, 1996, (lead and rose quartz)
Portal:
Every day we move without thinking through a series of thresholds, each ushering us between different experiences and states of being. Throughout cultures, portals have also been understood as symbolic sites of passage between good and evil, darkness and light, paradise and hell, life and death. Building on her earliuer 'Transitory Objects' Abranovic has created numerous works that give image to transition and transformation, increasingly focusing on transformative states of consciousness.
'The portal, for me, is really about a changed state of consciousness', the artist has stated. 'It's about how to access different temporal dimensions, from the cosmic to the earthly. But then I think the physical body can also be a gate. I watched Tibetans doing prostrations in Dharamsala. There were women who, even if they were not in good physical shape, could prostrate in front of the temple for up to twelve hours a day. It's extraordinary. Normally nobody could do that because it just hurts, but they seemed oblivious to the pain. I think this is a kind of necessary physical condition and preparation, which can get the body into the state that makes it possible to become a portal. To be receptive to that, I feel, is like being in a state of dream'.
Portal, 2022, (selenite, steel, aluminium and LED)
The Communicator, 2012/2023, (bloack wax with black tourmaline stones)
Dozing Consciousness:
A recurring thread through Abramovic's practice is her exploration of the limits of consciousness. She has attempted to release her spirit from her body and conscious memory through extremes of movement and vocalisation. Abramovic recalled of her early performances, 'when I pushed my body very hard, I really started to experience different states of mind. I didn't know what they were, because I didn't have any relation to meditation or spirituality at the time... much later when I met spiritual people I realised that I was experiencing meditation'.
The catalyst for this change was the time Abramovic and Ulay spent during the 1980s living with and studying the spiritual traditions of the Aboriginal people of Australia and Tibetan Buddhism. Their distinct practices of stillness and energy concentration had a lasting influence on her work. In particular, Aboriginal culture's sophisticated conception of space and time - in which past, present and future co-exist, and nature, humanity and the cosmos form a single unity - informed her perception of the critical role that performance art plays in conveying unspoken knowledge to audiences.
These concepts are reflected in the work displayed in this gallery, the frenetic energy of earlier performances having transformed into a compelling stillness that challenges the artist's body in a different manner. Abramovic has described the trajectory of her practice as 'more and more of less and less'.
Reprogramming Levitation Module, 2000/2008, (camomile flowers, copper and quartz)
Dozing Consciousness, 1997, (performance for video, 7 mins, 19 seconds)
The Current, 2017, (performance for video, no sound, 1 hour)
Spirit and Body:
Bed for Aphrodite and Her Lovers, 1991, (iron)
Other works bring a sense of the spiritual directly into museum spaces. Bed for Aphrodite and Her Lovers (1991) is dedicated to the ancient Greek goddess of love, reflecting a spiritual tradition that embraced sexuality and celebrated the human body. Part of the series 'Transitory Objects for Non-Human Use' and in parallel to the sculptural works made during the same decade these works offer an opportunity for spiritual contemplation and rejuvenation. Abramovic has spoken of her sense that people now visit galleries instead of churches; these sculptures embrace the museum's role as a secular temple.
Carrying the Milk from the Kitchen, 2009, (video)
Whilst Abrammovic grew up under communism, a social and political system that rejects religion, spirituality was central to her upbringing. She spent the early years of her childhood living with her devoutly Christian grandmother, whose blend of Serbian Orthodox Christianity with folk beliefs left a lasting impact on Abranovic, even as she investigated other spiritual practices. 'I am not particularlhy religious... what I do believe in is spirituality. I believe that one of the components of a work of art should be spiritual'.
In her work exploring Western traditions of mysticism, Abranovic plays particular attention of female spirituality. The 2009 series of performances on video 'The Kitchen' relates to the experiences of St Teresa of Avila. A cloistered nun whose mystic visions of Christ's love allegedly caused her to levitate. St Teresa's bodily experience of spirituality as well as her emphasis on asceticism and contemplation have made her a recurring figure of interest to Abramovic.
The Levitation of Saint Therese, from The Kitchen, 2009, (video)
looking closer
Chair for Human Use with Chair for Spirit Use, 2012, (wood, crisocola stone and quartz)
Luminosity:
Since the 1990s, Abramovic has increasingly turned to performances of longer duration. Through these she has discovered a state beyond physical and mental exhaustion, and pain that she terms 'luminosity' which is perhaps comparable to the transcendence some people experience through meditation. Only reachable through intense focus, she has explained that 'performance is about being in the present, it's about creating a luminous state of being'.
Luminosity, 1997/2023, (performance for video, 5 minutes 18 seconds)
The performance 'Luminosity' captures this process, employing a simple movement that becomes increasinglhy physically challenging, forcing the performer's ability to concentrate and be present.
A similar, but not identical, contraption in the gallery. I wondered if it was used for a live performance, but that did not happen while we were there.
Golden Mask, 2009, (video, 30 minutes)
The House with the Ocean View, 2002/2023, (performance, 12 days)
Abramovic's endurance was particularly challenged by The House with the Ocean View. For 12 days the artist lived in Sean Kelly Gallery, New York, as she abided by self-imposed ascetic rules that included not eating or speaking. Visitors could come each day to watch her and would establish a silent energy dialogue with the artist; in the final days of the performance, Abramovic's connection with the audience became so strong that she said she could see their auras. Opening less than a year after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the performance became a collective space for people to gather, process and connect.
The man in the audience on the left in the photograph above seemed to be in the process of establishing a silent energy dialogue with the artist who you can see lying on the bed in the 'bedroom' in the room on the right. He sat very still, seemed to be meditating.
and the sleeping area. When we first entered the gallery the artist was lying on the bench that, I presume, served as a bed. She then moved to the area in the middle, sat by the table, had a drink of water and watched us for quite a long time.
As you can see, the ladders that offered escape had knives for steps.
Finally, the conditions for this installation for the artist and for the public.
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