PRESS HIGHLIGHTS / THE WORKS PRESENTS – MARINA ABRAMOVIC
PROGRAMME 10
Thursday 26th November/ RTÉ ONE / 11:15PM
The Works Presents is a new 10-part series in which John Kelly meets key figures from the worlds of film and TV, books, music, theatre and the visual arts.
In the final programme this series, John meets performance artist Marina Abramovic at her home in New York.
Marina Abramovic was born in 1946 in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, the daughter of Communist partisans and national heroes, soldiers who were also prominent members of General Tito’s new post-war government.
Abramovic would go on to forge her own uncompromising cause in performance art – first to great scandal in her still Communist hometown, then in a more liberal Amsterdam in the 1970s, and finally in New York where she is something of a superstar.
Her work in the 1960s and 70s, in common with a lot of performance art of the time, saw her test her body and her audience to extremes. Famous early works include Rhythm O, in 1974, in which she offered the public 72 items – from a lipstick to a gun – to use on her body, an invitation of which they took full advantage for good and ill.
In the four decades of her practice, performance art has become much more part of the mainstream, change in which her work has certainly played a role. Now a star in the New York art world and beyond, the public queued around the block to sit with her in the phenomenal exhibition The Artist is Present at The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in 2010, actor James Franco is a fan, and Lady Gaga claims Abramovic as a mentor.