Artist invites visitors to press the flesh at Royal Academy show

IT IS more than 40 years since police were called to reports of visitors being forced to squeeze past a pair of naked performance artists flanking the entrance to a gallery in Italy.

But now Marina Abramovic’s controversial creation, Imponderabilia, will be replicated at the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) – the first time a live nude work of art has been exhibited in the main gallery.

The Serbian artist’s original 1977 performance was with her then boyfriend and fellow artist, Frank Uwe Laysiepen, at the Galleria Comunale d’arte Moderna in Bologna. It was shut down by police officers after 90 minutes but not before 400 visitors had passed through the human doorway.

A grainy video recording of the work shows members of the public following one another in quick succession. Many were unsure which naked body to face, some squeezed past as quickly as possible while others avoided going through altogether.

The display will be recreated at the RA by two young artists who will keep in position for up to three hours in the doorway between two adjoining gallery spaces.

Visitors less eager to get up close and personal with two strangers will have the option of walking around the naked duo when the three-month show opens next year.

Nudity has only featured in two performances in the RA’S history, and on both occasions it was in the Burlington Gardens annexe.

In 2009, Spartacus Chetwynd put on a risqué carnivalesque art show and in 2012 Eddie Peake exhibited his work Touch – a naked five-a-side football match in which teams were only differentiated by the colour of their socks.

Abramovic, who is known as the controversial grandmother of performance art, has not ruled out making an appearance at the exhibition as she will be in the capital when it opens on Sep 26 next year.

Andrea Tarsia, head of exhibitions at the RA, said Abramovic, was a “pioneering” artist who has “consistently tested the limits of her own mental and physical endurance”.