Playing with fire
After more than four decades setting alight the world of performance art, the legendary Marina Abramovic remains fearless in her groundbreaking work, and is now preparing to become the first ever woman to take over the Royal Academy’s Main Galleries
On a brutally hot morning in June, the Serbian artist Marina Abramovic is sitting in the cool of her suite at the Dorchester hotel eating porridge. Next to a glass of water are 13 pills and, on the table, a collection of invitations fanned out before her: Elton John’s Argento ball, the opening party at Masterpiece art fair… An assistant busies himself, advising on the timings of the day. She is in London on a flying visit from New York, as she is being honoured by the British Friends of the Art Museums of Israel and the auction house Dorotheum at their prestigious annual gala lunch. Later, when we leave the hotel together, the celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck asks for a selfie, and as we cross the road, there are gasps, nudges and surreptitious pictures from her fans and admirers. Abramovic commands attention beyond that of an artist; it feels as if I am in the presence of a rock star.
Her rise has been exponential, and she is still on the ascent. When she began her career nearly five decades ago in Tito’s Yugoslavia hoping to become a painter, success seemed improbable. Then, she began exploring immaterial performance art, which, by its very nature comparatively few would see, but many would hear about. This was the woman who, in 1973, cut a five-pointed star (the symbol of communism) in her stomach, whipped herself and lay on a cross made from a block of ice. A year later, she stood in a Naples gallery in front of 72 objects and invited the public to use them on her. The objects ranged from a rose and lipstick to razor blades and a loaded gun.
And this is how Abramovic has always done things; she makes her own rules, defies expectation. Her career has been characterised by
dogged commitment, pushing the physical and mental limits of human capability. Eight years ago, her show at MoMA, ‘The Artist Is Present’, was a sensation, attracting 850,000 visitors, including Björk, Lady Gaga and Isabella Rossellini, many of whom queued for hours for a chance to sit opposite her and look into her eyes. In preparation, she spent a year training herself to avoid eating, drinking and moving during the day and conditioning herself for the threemonth stretch. ‘Performance is the most difficult form of art,’ she tells me, her voice rich and assured like black coffee and her hazelbrown eyes drawing me in. ‘It’s timebased, it’s immaterial, you have to be with your body and your mind in the present. Your relationship and energy with the public is very important. Your mind can’t be far off somewhere, so you have to train yourself to be there for them, no matter what. It’s a transformative experience because it’s direct, it’s physical, it’s emotional.’
The emotions concern Abramovic, because this is what makes her work worth doing, what makes it count. ‘Technology took us away from these emotions; kids are sitting at the table texting each other messages. All performance is direct contact with a human being as a human being. I like strong emotions; if you suffer, go all the way – suffer, cry, scream, but then if you love, love all the way. Life is to feel, you know?’
Abramovic will be 72 at the end of November, but appears 20 years younger; her long dark hair is swept up into a high ponytail, making a virtue of her pale, luminous and unlined face. She wears her wisdom lightly, offering selfdeprecating quips on her outfit, as if slightly unnerved by veering away from her customary black. She is clad in a whimsical pale Marni silk shirt and matching trousers, patterned with gold ribbon, elephants and gummy bears (‘They look like Chinese pyjamas,’ she says with a touch of woe). It’s clear that she looks after herself: she visits southern India once a year for a 21day retreat, has a personal trainer, pops herbal pills and is about to go to the draconian Lanserhof in Austria (‘A hospital spa where they give you a piece of dry bread you have to chew 130 times, and starve you to death’). With such absorption in looking after her mind and body, I wonder whether she would still be prepared to die for her art as she was 45 years ago in Naples? ‘The public can genuinely kill you,’ she says. ‘If you give them the wrong tools, they behave differently. I’ve learnt so much in the process – I’ve got wisdom that I didn’t have when I was young. And now I understand that lifting the spirit is the best thing to do.’
‘Do you think that’s the purpose of your work now?’ I ask.
‘Yes I do. I’ve been studying Matisse, and during World War II, when everyone was painting the horror – an exact reflection of what was happening – Matisse was painting flowers. That’s lifting the spirit, my dear. You have to think differently.’
Her preoccupation with life and death has evolved but not abated. Is death something she thinks about a lot as she grows older? ‘Very much,’ she says. ‘I think dying is not a disappearance in darkness, but a disappearance in light.’ ‘Luminosity and lightness on the other side’ will form a large part of her show in 2020 at the RA, where she will take over the institution’s Main Galleries – the first woman to do so in its long history. She is conscious that the event will present another milestone in her career; she will be there in person for four months. ‘It will be exactly 10 years after “The Artist is Present”, and one of the biggest shows in my life,’ she says. ‘Women have been in the smaller spaces, but few artists get the large ones. And being a woman – it’s really about time.’
While she is proud to have that accolade, Abramovic does not call herself a feminist. She has abstained from having children, and has said that art has no gender: ‘There are only two categories to me – good art and bad art.’ She’s conscious of the responsibility of forging a path for women in a maledominated world, but to her, this means sacrifice. ‘It’s our fault,’ she says emphatically. ‘Women have many more strengths than men, but we just don’t take our power. I never care, I just take my power. I’m showing females they can do anything they want, it’s only that we make our own limits. We don’t have limits, we are powerful.’
By ‘limits’, she means family and children. At the gala afterwards, she’ll go on to say: ‘We are not ready to sacrifice as much as men, because we want family, we want children, we want love, we want art, we want everything, and guess what? It’s not possible.’ It’s not a fashionable view, but she is adamant that success comes from being singleminded in vision. ‘Human beings are divided into originals and the ones who follow. I’m only interested in originals, the ones who create something that a generation will follow, something different, breaking regulations, breaking limits.’
As we walk to lunch, she wants to talk about fashion. She is excited about the Burberry S/S 19 show in September; her close friend and collaborator Riccardo Tisci, who was at Givenchy, recently became the British brand’s chief creative officer. Her loyalty to Tisci is absolute. She watched Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding, and admits she was not keen on the dress, which was designed by Givenchy’s artistic director Clare Waight Keller. ‘It was too simple,’ she says. ‘Give people the dream!’ With that, she is whisked away, leaving us with a sentiment that could be her imperative for life.
‘Marina Abramovic. The Cleaner’ runs at Palazzo Strozzi (www.palazzostrossi.org), until 20 January 2019. For more information on BFAMI, visit www.bfami.org.