{"id":141299,"date":"2025-11-19T07:42:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T07:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/141299\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T07:42:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T07:42:12","slug":"marina-abramovic-was-told-nobody-has-time-for-the-artist-is-present-she-reveals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/141299\/","title":{"rendered":"Marina Abramovi\u0107 was told \u201cnobody has time\u201d for \u201cThe Artist Is Present,\u201d she reveals."},"content":{"rendered":"

The Artist Is Present<\/a>, Marina Abramovi\u0107<\/a>\u2019s landmark performance staged at the Museum of Modern Art<\/a> in 2010, is widely considered a high mark of her career. Yet the Serbian artist revealed that she was warned by a MoMA curator that \u201cnobody has time\u201d for what would become arguably her most iconic performance, in which she sat across from museum visitors every day for three months. Abramovi\u0107 recounted the incident in an interview on the Louis Theroux Podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n

During preparations for her 2010 MoMA retrospective, according to Abramovi\u0107,the then-director of MoMA PS1, Klaus Biesenbach, told her that the idea for The Artist Is Present was \u201ctotally ridiculous.\u201d He added that, in New York, \u201cnobody has time to sit in this chair.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reception proved otherwise. Abramovi\u0107 sat silently in the museum\u2019s atrium for the duration of the exhibition, while more than 1,500 people took turns facing her. The chair that Biesenbach referred to, she said, \u201cwas never empty.\u201d <\/p>\n

In the interview, Abramovi\u0107 also discussed her views on the art market, contrasting her approach with that of Damien Hirst<\/a>. She told Theroux she has \u201cnever\u201d made work with commercial value in mind, while praising Hirst for using the market strategically. <\/p>\n

Later in the conversation, Abramovi\u0107 addressed her long association with physical endurance and injury. She emphasized that she does not seek out pain in private life; instead, her work intends to confront cultural fears around pain and suffering. She described herself as a mirror for audiences, noting that, \u201cif I can liberate myself from the fear of pain, you can do the same.\u201d <\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Abramovi\u0107 appeared on The Artsy Podcast<\/a> to discuss her new NFT project and \u200b\u200bmindfulness in the digital realm. Next year, she will become the first living woman artist<\/a> to be featured in a solo exhibition at Venice\u2019s Gallerie dell\u2019Accademia<\/a>. Scheduled to coincide with the artist\u2019s 80th birthday, the show will feature several of her endurance-based performances. <\/p>\n

The Louis Theroux Podcast<\/a> is available on Spotify now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Artist Is Present, Marina Abramovi\u0107\u2019s landmark performance staged at the Museum of Modern Art in 2010, is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[437,434,435,436,438,146,85,46,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-141299","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-il","15":"tag-israel","16":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}