"German curator Klaus Biesenbach, then chief curator at large at New York's Museum of Modern Art, invited the artist to be the subject of the institution's first performance art retrospective in 2010, with 50 works spanning her entire career, including re-performances of historic pieces that lived only in documentation. That was historic in itself, but Biesenbach's proposed title gave her another idea."
""The curator, Klaus Bisenbach, said to me, 'Okay, the show is going to be 'The Artist Is Present,' because you're always in the work. When he said this, I knew what I was going to do." She could easily have simply done the usual, she tells Theroux: be present at the opening, see all her old friends, have a nice dinner, and die at peace, knowing she had had a great show at a great museum."
Marina Abramović prepared Balkan Erotic Epic while recalling her 2010 Museum of Modern Art retrospective, which featured 50 works and re-performances of historic pieces. The exhibition title The Artist Is Present inspired a durational piece in which Abramović sat motionless each day with a table and chair, aiming to show performance's transformative power. Curator Klaus Biesenbach initially dismissed the proposal as ridiculous. The resulting performance drew about 1,500 visitors, some spending hours in the piece. The scenario raises counterfactual questions about how the art world and audiences would differ if the performance had been quashed.
Read at ARTnews.com
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