Review: The Artist Is Present
Still from Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present.
Photo courtesy of Music Box Films.
Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present
Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present, the new HBO documentary by Matthew Akers and Jeff Dupre, chronicles Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović’s 2010 MoMA retrospective − the ultimate rite of passage into the canon for modern artists.
Like so many recently released independent documentaries, the film is geared more toward celebration than biography or critical inquiry. At times, I felt like I was watching a promotional video.
While there isn’t much biographical information, there are quick blurbs of Abramović’s closest colleagues discussing the broad concepts in her art, lots of Abramović getting dressed, her assistant answering phone calls, everyone getting in and out of cars, and so on. Sometimes I wonder if reality television is starting to leave its mark on documentary filmmaking.
The segment documenting the history and reunification of Abramović and her one time performance partner and lover, Uwe (or Olay) Laysiepen, is compassionate and touching. Laysiepen is candid and emotive when he discusses his bittersweet feelings towards Abramović, the immense shadow of her current career, and their working history. After a long period of estrangement, they’re finally meeting to talk.
There’s a moment when Abramović is cooking zucchini that’s wonderfully banal and “everyday”, and provides a break from artist-and-curator-speak. I think it behooves all artists to make sure there’s a shot in their documentary of them cooking dinner or digging through their purse for a water bottle.
Still from Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present.
Photo courtesy of Music Box Films.
The film primarily orbits around her 736-hour performance piece, The Artist Is Present, in which Abramović sits immobile in a chair six days a week for seven hours in the gallery. Museum-goers flock to sit across from her as they stare into each other’s eyes. It becomes sensational and starts to catch on. People return time and time again to be in the presence of Abramović; some return 20 times or more.
Lots of people cry (the experience has already been meme-ified on a blog that posts the faces of everyone who cries at the exhibit), but the most touching moment is Laysiepen offering his hands to Abramović, which she takes, symbolically sealing their reconciliation and deliberately and heartrendingly breaking the immobility of the piece.
Marina Abramović is one of the most influential artists of the 20th century and Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present is a sincere celebration of her work.
-JOSEPH WOZNY
Joseph Wozny is a writer and musician.
Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present
MFAH
Oct 7, 5 p. m.
October 13, 1 p. m.
October 14, 5 p. m.
