Performance Art (Stillness with Another)...

My life is my own performance art, as yours is yours, and that I can understand, but I just can't quite get a staged performance I saw in NYC.

Art makes you think, though.  The piece above, by Performance Artist Marina Abramovic, is from an artist I'd never seen before. She performed in NYC at the Museum of Modern Art and now, a week later, I am still thinking about it.  The photo above (credit and more here) is not what I saw. What I saw was this -- the artist sitting still all day in a chair looking at someone else sitting across from her and everyone around in the main two-story gallery at MoMA standing and watching her watch another.

Yet it has stayed with me. I was glad to see on MoMA's facebook page that 99 people had, at MoMA's request, put forth questions to ask her. Others, too, wondered how you explain this. I think that perhaps the appeal of this one act, where she sits from museum opening until museum closing for the duration of the exhibit of her works (Marina Abromovic:The Artist is Present, on through May 31) is because we rarely sit and focus on just one person for long. now. anymore. And for sure not. in. stillness. 

That is my take on it.  Art is, after all, what you make of it - the meaning it holds for you. But then, maybe I don't get it at all.

Comments

[rhea]

Hi! I just caught this post of yours and realized I hadn't seen you around and then I read a few of your earlier posts and realized you are winding down. Well, just wanted to say hello!

[MotherPie]

Hi Rea... Thanks for your comment and still paying attention!  I've done less blogging a lot of other things -- all good! but I can't give it up. Hope all is well w you!