Marina Abramovic and the most bizarre about face in recent memory
Yesterday, performance artist Marina Abramovic, in an interview with Spike, had some pretty negative things to say about Jay Z working with her in 2013 for his “Picasso Baby” video, billed as a performance art piece, which debuted on HBO and was nominated for a Grammy Award. In summation, ‘he used me for my ideas, and didn’t give me sh*t in return.’ Here’s the pertinent excerpt from her interview.
You did plan the shoot and your appearance together?
The day before, he came to my office and I gave him an entire power point presentation and said: okay, you can help me, because I really need help to build this thing. Then he just completely used me. And that wasn’t fair. This is very different from Lady Gaga, for example, who has done great work for me. Just by having 45 million followers, she brought all these young kids into my public.
Do you regret having supported Jay-Z?
I don’t look at things this way. Right now in my life, things happen. I don’t bother anymore. My life hasn’t been easy. There are very few performers from my generation even being considered. I’m a survivor. It’s very hard to be up there all the time. I could just do an exhibition at MoMA and go home, and it would be history. I didn’t need to kill myself with “The Artist is Present”. I also didn’t need to be here in São Paulo for two months doing workshops, doing eight lectures, working with this community. I do this because I believe in it. I feel responsible for performance in general.
What Abramovic didn’t apparently know, was that Jay Z had receipts.
In a statement given to ArtNet News, the producer of the video read aloud the receipt from Jay’s “large donation” over the phone. According to ArtNews:
“Thank you for your donation,” says a receipt from the Hudson, New York institute, according to New York dealer and “Picasso Baby” video producer Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn of Salon 94, who read parts of the document to artnet News over the phone Wednesday morning.
Today, this story took another interesting twist, this time, in Abramovic’s rebuttal to Jay Z’s producer’s receipt reading. Apparently, she had no idea Jay Z made his large donation, and she’s issued an official apology on behalf of the Marina Abramovic Institute.
