FACT: Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present

I did not no much about Marina Abramovic before I saw this film but I had vaguely heard the name. I knew nothing of the work she had done but after watching this film I find her fascinating and her work also really interesting. The film, The Artist is Present, is based around the exhibition which she did at MOMA, New York, in 2012 and took place for 3 months. You learn about her life as an artist and a small bit about her past such as her parents who were in the army and saw that her life was very structural as a child which is a possibility to why she can probably do all these performance art for such long periods of time. The film goes through the forty years of her life which she has given to performance art. The pieces in which Marina cant be forgotten because they are all shocking and she has such a fun personality from what I saw of her in the monologues in the film. The film goes through when she met Ulay and shows all their work together which involves showing domestic violence such as Ulay slapping Marina and vice versa. The reason why we see all their works is because this exhibition in New York shows all these pieces but instead of Ulay and Marina doing them its up and coming artists which Marina has chosen and gotten to know so that she can trust them. She needs to be able to trust the artists because whilst they are doing her old projects she is doing her new project upstairs. The new piece is called The Artist is Present where she sits at a table and the audience one by one can come and join her. All she does is looks up and stares at the spectator. With the stare it creates a connection between the artist and the audience. This connection has many different effects on people, some feel nothing whilst others are overtaken with emotions and in the film there were a lot of tears. One was Marina when Ulay came and sat down. This was emotional for Marina because of the artwork, Nightsea Crossing 1981, which where the two artist sat opposite each other everyday for many days. Marina in this work however sat everyday from 10:30-17:30 for 3 months which takes a lot of self control. Overall Marina Abramovic is a Performance artist who not only wants performance art to be a serious form of art such as painting and she uses her body to push this style of art forwards.