Edited by Klaus Biesenbach. Text by Arthur C. Danto, Chrissie Iles, Nancy Spector, Jovana Stokic.
Since the beginning of her career, in Belgrade in the late 1960s, Marina Abramovic has been a pioneer of performance art, creating some of the most important works in the field. Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present accompanies an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art that documents approximately 50 of the artist's ephemeral time- and media-based works from throughout her career. The book also discusses a unique element of the Museum's retrospective, live performance: a new work created for the occasion, and performed by Abramovic herself; and re-creations of the artist's works by other performers—the first such to be undertaken in a museum setting. The book spans over four decades of Abramovic's early interventions and sound pieces, video works, installations, photographs, solo performances and collaborative performances made with the Dutch artist Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen). Essays by Klaus Biesenbach, Chief Curator of Media and performance art at MoMA, and four distinguished scholars examine Abramovic's ideas of time, duration and the reperformance of performance art as a way to extend it into posterity. The Artist Is Present also includes a CD with audio commentary by the artist that guides the reader through the publication. The artist is present not only in the exhibition but also in the experience of the book.Born in Belgrade just after the end of the Second World War, Marina Abramovic was raised in the Serbian Orthodox Church (her great uncle was a Patriarch and a canonized saint in the Church) and left Yugoslavia in 1976, having already established herself as a performance artist, living in Amsterdam and eventually New York, where she presently lives.
STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely.
FROM THE BOOK
Since the beginning of her career, in Belgrade in the late 1960s, Marina Abramovic has been a pioneer of performance art, creating some of the most important works in the field. In The Artist is Present, the catalog to her major Museum of Modern Art exhibition, she writes, "So, what is a good work of art? It has that energy that tunes you into what is going on behind your back. Bruce Naumann always likes to say, “Art is a matter of life and death.” It sounds melodramatic, but it is so true. If you take whatever you do as a matter of life and death, and if you are there one hundred percent, then things really happen. Less than one hundred percent is not good art. It’s so hard to do it, but it is the only way. And this means no compromises."
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.5 x 12 in. / 224 pgs / 375 color / Audio CD. LIST PRICE: U.S. $50.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $67.5 ISBN: 9780870707476 PUBLISHER: The Museum of Modern Art, New York AVAILABLE: 4/30/2010 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Edited by Klaus Biesenbach. Text by Arthur C. Danto, Chrissie Iles, Nancy Spector, Jovana Stokic.
Since the beginning of her career, in Belgrade in the late 1960s, Marina Abramovic has been a pioneer of performance art, creating some of the most important works in the field. Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present accompanies an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art that documents approximately 50 of the artist's ephemeral time- and media-based works from throughout her career. The book also discusses a unique element of the Museum's retrospective, live performance: a new work created for the occasion, and performed by Abramovic herself; and re-creations of the artist's works by other performers—the first such to be undertaken in a museum setting. The book spans over four decades of Abramovic's early interventions and sound pieces, video works, installations, photographs, solo performances and collaborative performances made with the Dutch artist Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen). Essays by Klaus Biesenbach, Chief Curator of Media and performance art at MoMA, and four distinguished scholars examine Abramovic's ideas of time, duration and the reperformance of performance art as a way to extend it into posterity. The Artist Is Present also includes a CD with audio commentary by the artist that guides the reader through the publication. The artist is present not only in the exhibition but also in the experience of the book.Born in Belgrade just after the end of the Second World War, Marina Abramovic was raised in the Serbian Orthodox Church (her great uncle was a Patriarch and a canonized saint in the Church) and left Yugoslavia in 1976, having already established herself as a performance artist, living in Amsterdam and eventually New York, where she presently lives.
