El documental «La maldición de la Monalisa» de Robert Hughes tenía como argumento central la exhibición de la Monalisa en el Metropolitan de Nueva York y su gran despliegue mediático. Esto fue el inicio de un camino que llevó a reconocidas obras de arte a mutar su status, basado en su valor artístico, al de «celebridades» del mundo del espectáculo. Algo similar le sucedió a Marina Abramovic desde su retrospectiva en el MoMA. Se convirtió en toda una diva con un fuerte manejo de marca (que no han demorado en emular algunos de sus discípulos)
It’s been nearly two years since Marina Abramović made her appearance at the shoot for Jay Z’s “Picasso Baby” music video, but the events of that day are still fresh in her mind.
“In the end it was only a one-way transaction,” she recently told Vienna-based art magazineSpike. “I will never do it again, that I can say. Never. I was really naive in this kind of world. It was really new to me, and I had no idea that this would happen. It’s so cruel, it’s incredible. I will stay away from it for sure.”
The grand dame of endurance-based performance art, who has become much more of a public celebrity since her 2010 Museum of Modern Art piece “The Artist Is Present,” is peeved that Jay Z hasn’t supported her gesamtkunstwerk, the Marina Abramović Institute (MAI). While James Franco and Lady Gaga have championed the MAI project and the so-called “Abramović method” that will be taught there, the famous MC was apparently impervious to Abramović’s enticing and hypnotic … PowerPoint presentation?
“The day before, he came to my office and I gave him an entire PowerPoint presentation and said: OK, you can help me, because I really need help to build this thing,” Abramović told Spike. “Then he just completely used me. And that wasn’t fair … I am very pissed by this, since he adapted my work only under one condition: that he would help my institute. Which he didn’t.” (Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, founder of the art gallery Salon 94 and producer of the “Picasso Baby” video, claims he did.)
The rest of the interview — which includes “questions” like this gem: “When you rubbed your forehead with Jay-Z’s, it seemed like an economical transaction: I grant you the right to use my piece, but in reverse you have to provide a space for my brand within your campaign” — is worth reading if only because Abramović is uncharacteristically candid about how her work and image have changed since the MoMA blockbuster. As for the “Picasso Baby” debacle, it wouldn’t take much for Jay Z (who dropped $4.5 million on Basquiat a few months after touching foreheads with Abramović) to right the situation. Besides, there must be some naming rights still up for grabs at MAI; who wouldn’t want to rehydrate, after a grueling Abramović method session, in the “Blue Ivy Carter Water Drinking Chamber”?
Update, 5/21, 9:55am ET: The Marina Abramović Institute has issued a formal apology to Jay Z and Abramović, explaining that the rapper had in fact donated money to the MAI project. The statement, publish by the New York Times, reads:
Marina Abramovic was not informed of Shawn “Jay Z” Carter’s donation from two years ago when she recently did an interview with Spike Magazine in Brazil. We are sincerely sorry to both Marina Abramovic and Shawn “Jay Z” Carter for this, and since then we have taken to appropriate actions to reconcile this matter.
Publicado en Hyperallergic
“I will never do it again” | interview
In recent years, you have tested the consequences of the artist as celebrity. How did you experience the difference in quality between the original performance of “Relation” with Ulay from 1977, when you sat watching each other in a museum space for 17 hours, and “The Artist is Present”, your 11-week-long performance at MoMA in 2010?
In the 12 years of my relationship with Ulay, it was like a closed circuit: him watching me, me watching him, and the public watching us. After we split, I replaced him with the public, so that it’s me and everybody else. You can’t compare one with the other.
With the massive media buzz that accompanied and ultimately framed your performance at MoMA – would you agree that your medium changed from the body to the public gaze, mediated by cameras?
The media coverage was a side effect. For me it was important to use the Internet. I would have groups of people in New Zealand or in China sitting in cafes and watching the live stream. This adds another quality; I don’t think it takes away anything. The first time I experienced this was when I walked the Great Wall of China with Ulay [“The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk” (1989)]: It was the first time that the audience was not present, but through the media, people knew that in every given moment we were walking towards each other. Yet with MoMA, it was such a high level. Everything changed after “The Artist is Present”: I became a kind of public figure.
Again, would you agree that your medium is now the public gaze?
Yes, but that’s not even what it’s about. Everything changed. I introduced something very different: performance as the public performing. Here, in the Marina Abramović Method, I’m not even there anymore. I only create the tools for you to have an experience …
But you appear on four monitors, giving instructions on how to move and how to breathe, like a flight attendant. Your persona is a very integral part of this work as well.
Sure, but the relation to the audience is different. I’m interested more and more in working with masses, with a much larger community. My work is kind of going away from the trendy art public.
How did you feel when Jay-Z told you that he would be adapting “The Artist is Present” for his music video “Picasso Baby” in 2013?
I didn’t feel much. There are hundreds of people adapting my work. I have young pop groups who adapt my work. Just now, somebody’s made a porno movie called “Zadie is present”, have you seen that? [laughs] It’s insane!
But the difference with Jay-Z was that you yourself took part in his video shoot.