The Artist Is Present
For three months in 2010 Abramović sat silently on a chair at the Museum of Modern Art. Visitors could sit opposite her, one at a time, for as long as they liked. Many wept.
The work is the encounter between two people – it cannot be hung on a wall.
Marina Abramović performed The Artist Is Present at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from March to the end of May 2010. The performance was part of a large retrospective of her work, the museum’s first major exhibition of performance art. Abramović, born in Belgrade in 1946, had since the 1970s made performances testing the limits of body and mind.
In the exhibition’s largest hall Abramović sat on a chair at a table. Opposite her stood an empty chair. Visitors queued and then sat down, one at a time, to look her in the eyes in silence for as long as they wished. Abramović sat motionless throughout the museum’s opening hours, every day. After a while the table was removed, leaving only the two chairs.
The room was empty apart from the chairs and a square marked out on the floor in bright light. The audience stood around watching the encounter. Abramović wore a long dress whose colour changed over the course of the performance. The simple arrangement focused all attention on the faces and the gazes.
In all she sat for about 736 hours, and more than a thousand people sat opposite her. Some sat for a short while, others for a whole day. Many wept, and their reactions were photographed and posted online. The physical strain was considerable, since she did not move for long stretches. The exhibition drew huge crowds, and some visitors queued overnight to get a place in the chair.
One much-noticed moment came when her former partner and fellow artist Ulay sat down opposite her. They had worked together for many years and parted in the 1980s. Abramović broke her stillness and took his hands. The video clip of the encounter has been watched by millions of people.
The work has been interpreted as an exploration of presence and time in a world full of distractions. It is about truly seeing and being seen. At the same time it has been criticised as a crowd-puller that turned the artist into a celebrity. During the retrospective some of her earlier performances were re-performed by other artists, raising questions about how performance art can be preserved and re-created.
The Artist Is Present has become one of the best-known performances of modern times. It was recorded in a documentary film released in 2012. The work showed that performance can reach a very large audience and has influenced how museums work with live art. It cannot be hung on a wall, and today it exists only as memories, photographs and film.