Performance Art // Posted on June 20, 2010
It was a cool summer night filled with good music and good wine. The topic of conversation: performance art. A good friend had shared her distaste for this peculiar art form, which is relatively new. It was difficult to not agree with her as this method of exploring the world through encounter rarely rises above the status of “publicity stunt” (i.e. see abortion hoax).
Without a doubt my lack of exposure to this type of art is a direct result of growing in rural areas, too close to the cows and away from the art culture centers of the nation. I have grown up a bit, the Internet has become wildly popular, and I am much more educated and sensitive to the art world. So what am I waiting for? A conversation with another artist.
A new colleague shared with me a link to a NYTimes article.
At 5 p.m. Monday one of the longest pieces of performance art on record, and certainly the one with the largest audience, comes to an end. Since her retrospective opened at the Museum of Modern Art on March 14, the artist Marina Abramovic has been sitting, six days a week, seven hours a day in a plain chair, under bright klieg lights, inMoMA’s towering atrium. When she leaves that chair Monday for the last time, she will have clocked 700 hours of sitting.
…
Visitors to the museum were invited, first come first served, to sit in a chair facing her and silently return her gaze. The chair has rarely, if ever, been empty. Close to 1,400 people have occupied it, some for only a minute or two, a few for an entire day.
Consider performance art as a new viable art form? Check.