Serbian-born artist (1946- )
Theatre is fake ... The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
The Guardian, Oct. 2, 2010
My first paintings were of my dreams. They were more real to me than the reality I was living in--I didn't like my reality. I remember waking up, and the memory of my dreams was so strong that I would write them down, and then I would paint them, in just two very particular colors, a deep green and a night blue. Never anything else.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
Walk Through Walls: A Memoir
I expose myself to life, and from that, ideas come as a surprise. I totally dismiss the ones that are pleasant and easy. I'm only interested in the ones that really disturb me and that I get obsessed about. They're what bring me to new territory.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
"Life's Work: An Interview with Marina Abramovic", Harvard Business Review, November 2016
Because I did an event with Jay Z, she said I'd killed performance art. But who made these rules?
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
The Guardian, May 12, 2014
I think the absence of love in the family and the need to create a family with art world and public is really strong. Psychoanalyst would say it's a clear picture! But it didn't appear like that in the beginning.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
"Marina Abramovic talks friends, enemies and fear", The Guardian, October 22, 2016
When you're 50, the best thing to do is dance the Argentinean tango.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
"Marina Abramovic Makes Sundance Shut Up", Interview Magazine
After my performance The Artist is Present (2010) at MoMA in New York, many scientists became interested in why so many people who sat across from me began to cry. I was incredibly moved by this experience also, and was very curious to know what happens in our brains when we spend time not talking, just looking at one another. So I have done a number of projects now with neuroscientists that include a re-staging of The Artist is Present with me and the audience wearing electrode caps to monitor what is happening. What they have found is that there is an incredible amount of activity that happens when you take the time to really look at another human being without any verbal exchange. The scientists are now using all of this data from these experiments to try to understand more about non-verbal communication between human beings.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
Huffington Post, Aug. 23, 2013
When I think about my life, the early works, you know, always you learn as a young artist to have a style you can follow, a certain line. But I didn't do that. I had this enormous urge to make different works. And some of them, I didn't see any kind of connection. I didn't know where I'm going. But now, looking 45 years back, everything had perfect sense. It's like a straight line.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
The Guardian
I've never really had a studio. A studio makes you lazy and comfortable, and you repeat yourself.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
"Life's Work: An Interview with Marina Abramovic", Harvard Business Review, November 2016
I just want to create situations where people forget time.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
"Once Upon a Time", Harper's Bazaar, Feb. 7, 2012
When I read a book, everything around me stopped existing. All the unhappiness in my family--my parents' bitter fights, my grandmother's sadness at having had everything taken away from her--disappeared. I merged with the characters.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
Walk Through Walls: A Memoir
On one side is this strict orthodox religion, on the other is communism, and I am this little girl pulled between the two. It makes me who I am. It turns me into the kind of person that Freud would have a field day with, for sure.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
The Guardian, Oct. 2, 2010
For me, dreams were green and blue. I took some old curtains and made a long robe for myself in those precise colors, the colors of my dreams.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
Walk Through Walls: A Memoir
I made a tape recording of a bridge collapsing and I wanted to play it suddenly and very loudly when people were walking over a big bridge in Belgrade. The council forbid it. Their imagination is tiny; mine is big. I want always to shake everything up.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
The Guardian, Oct. 2, 2010
If we go for the easy way, then we never change.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
"Once Upon a Time", Harper's Bazaar, Feb. 7, 2012
I always sent my mother all these huge books I made. When my mother died, I was cleaning her cupboard, and these big books were only 20 pages long. She edited out, maybe burned, every single photograph where I'm naked.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
"The Devil in Marina Abramovic", The New York Times, Jun. 13, 2012
It is incredible how fear is built into you, by your parents and others surrounding you. You're so innocent in the beginning; you don't know.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
Walk Through Walls: A Memoir
In the beginning, I was a painter, but the moment I stood in front of the public and expressed my ideas using my body as the object and subject of the work, immediately it was clear that this is my best medium. I struggled with acceptance; my early career was hell. But it took me all these years to create a foundation so that performance would become accepted in the same way as photography and video. You have to believe that you're right, even if everybody believes you are wrong.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
"Life's Work: An Interview with Marina Abramovic", Harvard Business Review, November 2016
It was a big base of my performance art ... the idea of here and now ... not something that's happening in the past or the future. It's always happening. It's always now.... Only what matters is the present.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
The Guardian, June 17, 2015
I didn't take no for an answer. I've always been like that. If I think in my gut that I'm right, I do it. You have to have this kind of conviction. Otherwise, I would have given up many years ago. After the 1970s, all the performance artists started doing paintings and sculptures or architecture; performing was far too hard. I'm so happy I didn't give up.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
"Life's Work: An Interview with Marina Abramovic", Harvard Business Review, November 2016