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Marina Abramovic Critique On Performance Art

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Towards the late 1950s, Abstract expressionism began to lose impetus, many artists across the world, especially in America and Europe, began to embrace performance art. In that context, Marina Abramovic’s work is typical of the ritualistic strain in 1960s performance art, often involves putting herself in grave danger and performing lengthy, harmful routine that result in her being burnt or cut, or enduring some privation. She view her art almost as a sacrificial and religious rite, performed by herself for a congregation of viewers; the physical ordeals she endures form the basis for exploring such themes as cleansing, endurance, trust, departure and exhaustion. Her work might be interpreted as having displaced art from traditional media,…show more content…
In the process, every time she pierced her skin, she selected another knife from those carefully laid out in front of her. Halfway through, she began to play a recording of the first-half of the hour long performance, using the rhythmic beat of the knives striking the floor, and her hand, to repeat the movements, cutting herself at the same time. For the first time, she understood that drawing on the audience’s energy drove her performance, which was marked in this piece, and this became an important concept informing much of her later…show more content…
Everyone who entered had to sidle past them, deciding which body to face. Also, Breathing in/ Breathing out, 1977, in which they inhaled and exhaled from each other mouths until they almost suffocated. The performance named Rest Energy, from 1980, a highly intense piece that revealed the fragility of the line between death and life; it was only four minutes and ten seconds long. Ulay and Abramovic faced each other, aiming an arrow a tense bow, just inches from her heart. They placed small microphones on their chests in order to make audible their increasingly rapid heartbeats in response to the growing danger. When Marina and Ulay decided to end their relationship, they embarked on their last performance on March, 30, 1988, The Lovers; the walking along the Great Wall of China. Abramovic walked from the Shanhai Pass at the wall’s east end, Ulay walked in a opposite direction, from the wall’s western end near the Gobi Desert. After ninety days, they met and reunion marked a definitive end to their romantic relationship, as well as the twelve-year long artistic collaboration. Their union was much battered and repaired, though it ultimately couldn’t survive the demands of such intense proximity or a discrepancy
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