Help!
Help! ”.
The voice of Marina Abramovic came from the bathroom of César Jiménez's apartment on the Paseo de la Castellana in Madrid one morning in 2018. Until then, everything had gone well at a breakfast for a few friends organized by this businessman and collector of Spanish art in front of the photo from the series
The Scream -
1.50 by 2.50 meters, the largest by the Serbian artist that no one has in our country - that hung in the living room of the house.
"We ate cheese and eggs, chatted so happily, and then someone suggested we take some selfies."
She went to the bathroom to get ready.
It was a long time before we realized that she had been locked up.
I tried to open the door, but couldn't.
I ended up taking out the toolbox and unscrewing it.
"And did she get angry, or did she look scared?" She came out so calm.
But do you think that someone who almost died inside a fiery star is going to cower in a bathroom on the Castellana?
César Jiménez is not wrong.
Jump back to Belgrade, 1974: a young Abramovic performed the
performance
Rhythm 5,
in which with wooden slats she traced a five-pointed star on the ground, set it on fire and stretched out inside.
The flames consumed the oxygen and he lost consciousness.
Fortunately, someone in the audience sensed it and got her out of there: a few more minutes and she would have died.
And it was not the only time.
After a few months, performing in Naples
Rhythm 0,
where she submitted naked to the wishes of the public, she received a cut on the neck and a guy came to point her with a loaded pistol.
"Well, you know,
shit happens
!"
[something like "shit splashes"], says the artist now remembering that.
Almost five decades have passed, and Marina Abramovic, today the world's queen of
performance
, speaks by video conference while cooking an Indian recipe for lentils in a UK apartment. Jovial and communicative, she displays the energy of a twenty-something at the beginning of the university year. Except that a serenity typical of someone more mature is superimposed on that. In any case, it is difficult to recognize the person permanently at the limit with photos of their actions. They are other times.
"In
Rhythm 0
I was so angry that I was ready to die."
There was no room for
performance
as an art form.
People said that those of us who were doing it were idiots, and I was a masochist.
So I wanted to give the public responsibility for everything, including my death.
Anyway, then I was 28 years old and I was furious.
Now I am 75 and I feel great.
Abramovic, with one of his pieces at Factum Arte, in Madrid Caterina Barjau
It is understood. He has several exhibitions on the agenda (among them, one in Madrid in February, and his great retrospective in London scheduled for 2023), he is representing his stage project 7
Deaths of Maria Callas
in several theaters
, and on October 22 he will receive the Prize in Oviedo Princess of Asturias of the Arts, in a ceremony presided over by Leonor and the Kings. Look for the letter that Felipe VI sent her to congratulate her. He reads it aloud with an emotion that sounds genuine.
"There is a lot of art that is intellectual, but mine has to hit your guts."
And that is what the letter acknowledges, that my work is deeply emotional.
When I received it, I was very humbled and grateful.
I looked back at my past, when I started doing
performances
and I was an outcast.
If someone had told me then that they were going to give me such an award, I would not have thought that was possible.
But I never give up.
Many of those who started doing
performances
with me left, and I continued.
Hans Ulrich Obrist, curator, critic and director of the Serpentine Gallery in London, an expert in her work as well as his friend, summarizes why she deserves the award:
"There are many reasons why it is so important."
To begin with, she is a pioneer of
performance
art
, from those extreme works that she did in the early seventies to the use of long duration in other more current pieces.
But she has also been a pioneer in creating her foundation, the Marina Abramovic Institute, a multidisciplinary education center in which she trains young artists.
They are fascinated by it because it has been able to go beyond the world of art, becoming an icon similar to those of pop music.
He has made these boundaries very porous because of the fluidity of his work.
Marina Abramovic photographed at the Factum Arte workshops, Madrid.
July 2021 Caterina Barjau
Spain has played an essential role in his life and in his work.
Here he has developed projects, has found inspiration and also friends.
For all this, every year he spends seasons in Madrid.
—My relationship with Spain has been very deep for a long time.
I am a great lover of bullfighting and flamenco, which express the drama and spirit of this town: I suffer the same kind of drama.
In addition, I was very inspired by Saint Teresa of Ávila, on whom I did a work,
The Kitchen.
And I have collaborated with Adam Lowe, who produces some of my sculptures and is like a mentor to me.
I go almost every month, ”he explains.
Adam Lowe is the founder of the Madrid-based artistic production company Factum Arte, which manufactures pieces by some of the most galactic authors on the international scene, from Anish Kapoor to Marc Quinn or Abramovic herself.
She remembers how seven years ago she came to the workshop looking for a way to turn her art of action into objects that were both material and ethereal:
—We scanned his body to produce different pieces from him, and we decided to make them in alabaster.
Working with her has always been a breeze.
He has very clear ideas.
I had already done
The Artist Is Present
at MoMA [in New York], which had been an exhausting experience, so I was trying to find a way to be there even when I wasn't.
It can be argued that
The Artist Is Present,
that
performance
in which she sat silently in a wooden chair for eight hours a day for three months so that people were succeeding one by one before her, was what ended up consecrating her before him. wider audience. The action was captured in a documentary directed by Matthew Akers and Jeff Dupre. The climax came with the emergence of the artist Uwe Laysiepen, Ulay, who was his professional and sentimental partner between 1976 and 1989. It meant their reunion after two decades. After handing over this uncomplicated syrupy moment to the world, they became embroiled in financial disputes and staged a reconciliation shortly before his death from cancer in 2020.
In the picture with Giuliano Argenziano Caterina Barjau
Something that the detractors of Marina Abramovic repeat is precisely that her best works date from the times of the tandem with Ulay, when they lived in a van as acrobats and barely obtained income from carrying out their actions, many today mythical, such as
Relation in Space
or
The Lovers
, in which they crossed the Great Wall of China from opposite ends.
This could be explained by the eternal fascination generated by the cliché of the destitute artist.
Or by a more sibylline belief: that it was he who put all the talent.
She laughs when asked about this theory:
—I laugh because I have a very precise vision of the development of my work.
When I met Ulay, I was doing
performances
and he was doing photos.
After touring the Great Wall, our farewell, he continued with his photos and I with my
performances
.
It was 12 years of very important work, but my career spans 50. I don't think
The Artist Is Present
or
The House with the Ocean View
are bad jobs.
I always give one hundred percent.
My soul, my poetry, my atomic structure, my whole being.
—But successful artists, like you, are often questioned more.
"I was lucky that success was late, because if it happens to you when you're young you become narcissistic and greedy."
The ego is a huge obstacle for an artist.
I became more humble when things started to go better for me after the Venice Biennale.
In 1997, just 50 years old, he was awarded the Golden Lion of Venice for Balkan Baroque: he sat on a mountain of cow bones with rotting remains of meat that he obsessively and unsuccessfully cleaned using a brush, alluding to the Balkan war. .
The Montenegrin Minister of Culture vetoed its participation in the Biennale, which finally took place at the invitation of its curator, Germano Celant.
So the award was a kind of redress, in addition to validating her as an individual artist after the period with Ulay.
Mateo Feijoo, director of the Teatro de la Laboral de Gijón between 2007 and 2010, was the one
who after he proposed to
make in the kitchens of the center's
performance
The Kitchen, a
tribute to Santa Teresa, documented in a series of striking photographs that she just levitating over stoves and pans.
He considers that this was a turning point after which his work has not maintained the level of quality.
—For me, what he does now and what he did in the beginning are totally different things, although his body is in both.
The Kitchen was like a transitional project, one of his last pieces with more meaning.
At that time she already had the idea of opening her foundation and she told me: "I need to earn money."
Together with Adam Lowe, founder of the Spanish company that produces his pieces.
"He has been like a mentor to me," says the artist. Caterina Barjau
He is not the only one to think this way.
In 2015, the prestigious critic and academic Estrella de Diego published a column in Babelia, 'La impostura de Abramovic', which began with the phrase: “I have stopped believing Marina Abramovic.
And you?".
He ended up lamenting the trivialization to which, in his opinion, he has subjected his best works.
He summed up a certain current of opinion that was not uncommon in the artistic world.
Of course it all depends on who you ask.
Efraín Bernal, her gallery owner in Spain, who has known her for more than 15 years and who in February will open a large solo show with photos of the artist, rebels against this:
"It's easier to criticize than to be."
They once told me about her: "No artist should criticize another who is better than him."
Well, I would extend this opinion to all of us.
Disqualifying such a relevant creator, undoubtedly one of the most influential today after Warhol, seems absurd to me.
The editor and gallery owner Elena Ochoa Foster, who met her at the Art Basel fair years ago through mutual friends, uses no less enthusiastic terms:
—He is an artistic genius who never stops reinventing himself.
Your curiosity and risk taking are limitless.
But when you get to meet her in person, the encounter surpasses all expectations.
Every time we spend time together it is a memorable experience.
In this, Mateo Feijóo does coincide when evoking the shared season in La Laboral de Gijón:
—Working with her was very easy, as well as a very strong experience.
The Marina that is placed before the cameras is very different from the other that is with you in a tavern in the old town sipping a wine while watching a football match.
That is very close.
Artwork by Marina Abramovic: The Seven Deaths of Maria Callas.Marco Anelli (Marina Abramovic Archives)
Because of that ability to enjoy any situation, and perhaps also because of a certain candor that occasionally emerges, Jimena Blázquez, director of the NMAC Montenmedio Arte Contemporáneo Foundation, in Vejer de la Frontera (Cádiz), refers to a more childish side:
"She's like a little girl."
Very funny, very loving and generous, but also with her fears.
And he loves chocolate, although he lives that hobby with a certain guilt.
Blázquez is possibly Marina's best Spanish friend, whom she met 20 years ago and who sponsored her son Antonio.
A black and white photo of a godmother and godson appears in the hall of her house in Madrid, a large apartment invaded by contemporary art where the artist stays every time she visits the city.
—When he arrives, he sits down in the kitchen and says: “How good we are here.
We don't have to go anywhere, do we?
It is very homemade.
He doesn't drink alcohol, and he doesn't like going out or going to dinner, ”says Blázquez.
The Navy itself authorizes this approach:
—It's true what Jimena says, I don't drink alcohol.
I'm sure I'm the only artist you know who doesn't drink!
I like to sleep eight hours a day, cook my own meals, and exercise in the morning, so I lead an extremely simple and structured life.
So there is the idea of Marina Abramovic as a fusion of warrior and medieval monk. But there is also another that confines her to the archetype of a frivolous delivered to trend magazines. The one that is seen with famous friends like Lady Gaga and James Franco and collaborates in commercial actions with Adidas. For her none of this is incompatible:
"I always say that there are three Marinas in me." The warrior Navy, the spiritual one, and then another who likes to go to fashion shows, go out in magazines, eat chocolate and read not always great literature, but silly things to relax. Before, the last one I was ashamed of, but now I accept them all and they coexist harmoniously. When I do a
performance,
I am the first; when I need solitude, the second, and when they offer me an opportunity like that of Riccardo Tisci making clothes for me, I am the third. Why should I feel guilty?
Tisci, the fashion designer currently at the creative helm of Burberry, is as stellar as the celebrities he dresses.
Among them, Marina herself, for whom she has designed the costumes for the play 7 Deaths of Maria Callas, a mixed live performance and film show that premiered in Munich in 2020 and which she has performed in various European theaters.
A complex and long-cherished project whose production had been postponed several times:
"I'm the biggest fan of her work, so I'm very proud to have helped her make her dream come true."
She is bold and brave.
He has broken many boundaries, bringing new perspectives to art and giving it a new life.
It's iconic in every way, ”says Tisci.
Marina Abramovic photographed at the Factum Arte workshops, Madrid.
July 2021 Caterina Barjau
But being an icon can pay dearly, especially depending on who gets it. In her memoir,
Knocking Down Walls
(Malpaso), she recalls how the Belgrade press called her exhibitionist and self-centered at the beginning of her career. What is striking is that those same accusations continue to be heard by those who today try to ridicule her, when the same does not happen with other artists who traveled similar paths, such as Joseph Beuys or Bas Jan Ader (but yes, curiously, with Yoko Ono). All this suggests that the
ad hominem
disqualifications
could be rather
ad feminam.
Joining this hypothesis is María Gimeno, a Spanish artist known for her
feminist
performance
Queridas viejas, in which she vindicates the neglected role of women throughout the history of art:
—She approaches a stereotype that, due to her physical and mental stamina, is considered masculine, but being in a feminine body produces rejection.
You may not want to classify yourself as a feminist and I respect that, but I believe that in fact it is.
However, Abramovic sidesteps the question of feminism when it is brought to the table:
—There are people who hate me and people who love me, but not in between.
And I think that's good.
"Do you think that part of that hatred comes precisely because you are a woman?"
—The interesting thing is that we think about why there are more male artists than women. It's our fault, the women's fault. Because we want to have children, take care of the house, and be happy with it. Men automatically get all this because women give it to them, who invest so much energy that they cannot dedicate themselves to other things. Also, do you know how many galleries are run by women? But it turns out they expose men. Why? In 250 years there has not been a single female artist exhibiting in a solo show at the Royal Academy in London. I will be the first. That's crazy.
This exhibition is the great retrospective that will incorporate works in all imaginable formats, including many of the sculptures that are being produced in Madrid. It has also been postponed on several occasions since the COVID broke out, but according to the latest plans it will be inaugurated in September 2023. As a preview, from this September, the London-based Lisson Gallery opens an exhibition that includes its alabaster sculptures, and that has meant its up-to-date on the market. Function that the same gallery already fulfilled in 2010 by offering photo and video records of some of its old actions as objects suitable for sale. It was demonstrated so well in
performance
can be obtained an economic return, provided they have the right strategy.
Giuliano Argenziano, a southern Italian, deals with this matter in expansive and resounding ways who has been directing the artist's studio for nine years.
—When I started working with her, my challenge was to understand where the income came from.
How do you make money from something so immaterial?
That took a long time and a lot of observation.
She tells me: "Giuliano, this is a beautiful project."
And I say, "Yeah, but it will take a long time, let's make sure it makes financial sense."
We are always together and we discuss everything.
"Every time she comes it's like a breath of fresh air comes in," says Adam Lowe. Caterina Barjau
"Are they a strictly professional duo?"
Or is the personal question also intermingled?
"We both see each other as a family." I am aware of the danger: family is something you take for granted, so you have to be very careful and respect each other's limits. But if I'm here, it's because the relationship works, ”Argenziano insists.
With his biological family the matter is more complicated. Marina Abramovic maintains an excellent relationship with her niece Ivana, a nuclear physicist, but not so much with her father, her brother Velimir. How her parents, Danica and Vojin, war heroes from Tito's Yugoslavia, tortured each other and her with a cocktail of physical punishment, demands and affective toxicity, gives a detailed account in her memoirs: on one occasion, her mother He threw a glass ashtray at his head shouting "I gave you life and now I will take it from you." Which did not prevent him from delivering a speech full of tenderness and acceptance at his funeral.
—It is true that the relationship with my mother was enormously difficult.
Full of love, hate and discomfort.
She was extremely cold to me, but later I understood that she wanted to make me very strong.
And he succeeded, although emotionally it was not easy - admits the artist.
These experiences were also reflected in
Life and Death by Marina Abramovic
, an autobiographical work that in 2012 he performed at the Teatro Real in Madrid under the orders of stage director Bob Wilson, and together with the singer Anohni (then Antony) and the actor Willem Dafoe. , who collaborates with her again in the piece about Maria Callas.
Marina called the experience "a nightmare."
But Dafoe, in a videoconference from Rome, clarifies:
"It was a challenge, but also a lot of fun."
We all really enjoyed it.
I accepted that work because I always wanted to work with Wilson, and because I admired Marina.
My wife [film director Giada Colagrande, author of the documentary
The Abramovic Method
(2013)] has known her for 30 years.
I love her company, everything with her becomes an adventure or an opportunity to redefine your life.
And he tells the best dirty jokes I've ever heard.
You should ask him to tell you some.
Obviously I do.
But she laughs heartily just before refusing.
-How?
That would be politically incorrect!
Political correctness completely destroys creativity, it's terrible.
So what do you want, get me in trouble?