Surprisingly, women made up the vast majority of the top 50 sitters; 37 by my quick visual count. Just a statistical fluke? Does the MOMA have a higher base of female visitors? Did females identify more with the female artist?

(One of Marina’s photos is mistakenly labeled, which is why my script placed her in this list…too lazy to fix right now)

See my list of the top 200 most popular portraits from Marina’s exhibit.

Photos by Marco Anelli. © 2010 Marina Abramović

420	420	391	386	293
292	236	207	189	167
164	154	149	138	114
108	105	105	104	103
102	100	99	96	93
93	91	90	89	88
88	87	86	86	86
85	84	83	81	80
80	78	78	77	77
77	77	76	76	75

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Today was the last day of the phenomenal performance art retrospective by Marina Abramović (“The Artist is Present”). I missed the hijinks, and it didn’t make me cry, but I’m wondering if I will ever enjoy an exhibit at the MoMA as much as Abramović’s. Since its opening week, I’ve seen it at least a half-dozen times, each time noticing something new (some of the exhibits are video recordings as long as an hour).

It was the type of art that sounds like attention-seeking drek if you try describing it (“She’s naked and she walks into a wall really fast. She’s naked and she cuts a pentgram in herself. She’s naked and she dances until she faints!”). But the MoMA did a masterful job of arranging her work; what could’ve been a simple cheap thrill (like brushing past two naked models to get into the exhibit) became a profound and sensical ensemble of her life’s work.

The New York Times describes a brief roundup of her work (the author, Holland Cotter, is dismissive of the MoMA’s restaging of her work, mostly because Cotter thinks that the unpredictability of Abramovic’s art is what gave it its power. I’d be inclined to agree if I hadn’t heard of her before now):

Her solo work from the early 1970s was hair-raisingly nervy. She stabbed herself, took knockout drugs, played with fire. For one piece she stood silent in a gallery for six hours, having announced that visitors could do anything they wanted to her physically. At one point a man held a gun to her neck. Her eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t flinch.

In 1976 she started collaborating with the German artist Uwe Laysiepen, known as Ulay. Some of their performances were punishing athletic events, as they slammed their bodies together or into walls. Others were almost aggressively passive. For a piece called “Imponderabilia” they stood facing each other, nude, in a narrow doorway in a museum. Anyone wanting to go from one gallery to another had no choice but to squeeze awkwardly and intimately between them.

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Never been a fan of performance art, but it is worth an afternoon at the MOMA. The top floor exhibition has some interesting videos and live art of people slapping each other and being naked.

From the MOMA description:

Abramović, best known for her durational works, has created a new work for this performance retrospective—The Artist Is Present (2010)—that she will perform daily throughout the run of the exhibition, for 77 days and a total of over 700 hours. For her longest solo piece to date, Abramović sits in silence at a table in the Museum’s Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium during public hours, passively inviting visitors to take the seat across from her for as long as they choose within the timeframe of the Museum’s hours of operation. Although she will not respond, participation by Museum visitors completes the piece and allows them to have a personal experience with the artist and the artwork.

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