An excellent insight to the life of an exceptional artist. Marina Abramovich changed the world of art forever with her performances. The only negative thing for me is her overwhelming spirituality which is very far from me. ( )

About 10 years ago I attended the theater production “the life and death of Marina Abramovic”, a production by Bob Wilson, starring Marina Abramovic herself and Willem Dafoe. And that still is one of the most imaginative visual spectacles I have ever seen. This autobiography has been on my want-to-read list for a long time. Reading it has clarified quite a bit, especially her sheltered childhood in a “Red Bourgeois” environment in what is now Serbia (then Tito's Yugoslavia) and her eternal obsession with getting love and attention from her very cold mother. A psychologist/psychiatrist can probably explain perfectly why Abramovic always pushed the physical and mental boundaries in her artistic performances, even to the point of sadomasochism, and explicitly went on an exhibitionistic tour. Her ‘performance art’ is not my genre, I must admit, but it remains intriguing. Like any autobiography, at times this work is strongly apologetic. Abramovic finds it necessary to reveal her love life in great detail and she also settles some scores along the way. The regularly recurring magic-realistic elements are also not really my thing. Towards the end you can notice that she starts to see herself more and more as an institution, and shows off her successes and her parties in the artistic jet set. That means that this book gradually loses its momentum and eventually becomes a narcissistic self-aggrandizement. All in all, a readable overview of one of the most intriguing artists of the past 50 years. ( )

My first encounter with Marina Abramovic happened sometime in the late 1990's when I stumbled over a photo of her performing "Rhythm 0."



I had no idea who she was or what the context of the image was, but I was struck by the combination of her utter vulnerability and apparent steadfastness.

Sometime last year I found her again -- not realizing it was the same woman -- when I watched the video of her encountering her former romantic and artistic partner Ullay during her marathon piece of sitting in silence with whomever came and sat opposite her in a museum: "The Artist is Present."

https://youtu.be/OS0Tg0IjCp4

"Walking Through Walls" is Marina's account of the extrordinary life she has lived, her extreme (and often unsettling) performance art pieces, and the forces which shaped and challenged her. Her tone is frank and confessional and vulnerable -- like her art. She achieves one of the most difficult tasks of autobiography: finding the fine line between getting bogged down in detail while still sharing enough highly personal episodes and thoughts to be truly revelatory. It was fascinating to read the details behind the two pieces I had seen bits of, and have my relationship to them shift because of that deeper understanding.

Marina lives with intensity, discipline, and dedication beyond what most people will ever know. From her childhood in Tito's Yugoslavia, to spending months with the Aborigines of the Outback, to living in a van and creating performance art with Ullay, to creating installations at some of the world's top museums, she has lived an amazing life, one well worth taking the time to engage with through this book.
( )

Marina Abramovic ist vermutlich die bekannteste moderne Performancekünstlerin. Sie hat Performance sozusagen in den Mainstream gebracht und vielen Menschen zugänglich gemacht, die ansonsten nichts damit anfangen hätten können. Somit trägt sie auch dazu bei, die Diskussion zu führen, was Kunst eigentlich ist.
Interessant und dennoch zugänglich ist auch ihr Leben. Die Biografie ist sehr leicht zu lesen und zeichnet sich durch große Offenheit aus. Allerdings ist genau das auch typisch für Abramovic. Sie zeigt viel, exhibitioniert sich nahezu, aber sie zeigt nur das, was sie zeigen will. Sie zeigt ihre Interpretation ihres Lebens, ihrer Beziehungen, sie zeigt ihre Wahrheit bzw. das, was sie möchte, dass der Lesende als Wahrheit annimmt.
Ich fand das Buch interessant, weil ich die Radikalität, die Hingabe an die Kunst sehr beeindruckend finde. Zu einer Zeit, als Jugoslawien noch sehr isoliert war, lebte sie bereits ein internationales Leben und so blieb es auch. Schon lange vor der Globalisierung war Abramovic eine Weltbürgerin.
Ihre Kunst mag ich wirklich, insofern fand ich auch das Buch über die Gedanken und die Entstehung dieser Werke interessant. Es ist sicher kein literarisches Werk, hat keinen enormen Spannungsbogen, aber es zeichnet ein immerhin über 70-jähriges radikales Künstlerleben einer Frau, einer Europäerin, einer Weltbürgerin nach, die sich selbst erfand. Das ist durchaus beeindruckend. ( )

Immediata e sincera autobiografia. Essenziale per capire l'arte della Abramovic ( )