Performance Art

Performance art does not use scripts.  It will often include some form of action or spoken word which is a form of direct communication between the artist and audience .  Performance art will often entail a dramatic performer.  Marina Abramovic, a well-known performance artist, was born on November 30th, 1946 in Serbia.  She describes herself as the "grandmother of performance art," creating approximately 50 works over four decades.  Although she initially studied painting in an art school, in the late 1960s she began experimenting with performance. For a 1973 piece called “Rhythm 10,” she turned on a tape recorder, splayed out her hand on the gallery floor, then quickly and repeatedly stabbed at the spaces between her fingers with one of ten knives, changing knives each time she cut herself. After she’d gone through all the knives, she replayed the tape and repeated the performance, blow by blow as recorded, on the bloody floor.  The photo above refers her to work "The Artist is Present" where Ms. Abramovic sat silently at a table in the museum’s atrium, facing an empty chair. She was scheduled to sit there all day, every day, during museum hours, for the run of her show. The museum estimated that, if she stuck to the plan, she will sit for 716 hours and 30 minutes, earning her a record for endurance in the performance art sweepstakes.