Hey guys, its Karin, Welcome to Little Art Talks!
To celebrate Valentine's this month, I’m going to be sharing some of the greatest partnerships
of art history.
Of course, I will be sharing the sweet and passionate stories of love, the drama, the
affairs - but also what it was like to be artists, partners, and also collaborators
in some cases.
What kind art did they make, and how did their partners influence their work?
So, if you’re interested in these videos, be sure to subscribe to Little Art Talks for
new videos every Monday.
This video will be about Marina Abramovic & Ulay.
Most of you will recognize the two from Abramovic’s 2010 performance in the Museum of Modern Art
in New York, “The Artist Is Present.”
This was a performance in which Abramović sat in a chair for eight hours a day, and
invited visitors to sit across from her.
In between each sitter, she would look down, close her eyes and gather energy for the next
person.
When she looked up and saw that Ulay had unexpectedly taken a seat, she began to cry and broke her
own rule of the performance by reaching out to hold his hands.
This emotional moment, caught on video was viewed by millions on YouTube.
We get the sense that this was the reunion of long-lost lovers.
We’re led to wonder, what is their relationship?
What were they feeling?
Thinking?
While their relationship was one full of mysticism, and attraction, and energy, it was also one
in which two very strong egos came head to head.
And their collaboration often dealt with what it meant for these two to come together.
The two met when Marina traveled to Amsterdam in 1976.
She arrived on her birthday, and fate would have it, the very first person she meets is
Ulay.
And guess what?
He has the same birthday!
That’s amazing.
The two very quickly became lovers and collaborators.
They are both performance artists, and their work together often explored the limits of
physical and psychic endurance (and I do mean endurance) and gender roles.
The two made some of the most iconic and influential works of performance arts during this time-
many of which are now literally written into art history books.
Abramović has even been dubbed the “grandmother of performance art” for her innovation in
the genre.
They formed a collective being that they called “The Other”.
They dressed the same, behaved the same.
They formed a relationship of complete trust, describing themselves as parts of a “two-headed
body”.
In Breathing In/ Breathing out, they explored extreme states of consciousness.
The two took in and exhaled each other’s breath, not breathing any external oxygen,
until they used up all the available oxygen and passed out 17 minutes into the performance.
The two depended on each other literally, desperately trying to stay conscious despite
the inevitability of running out of air.
When they both pass out, metaphorically, they deal with the death of self, which is always
at stake in a collaborative work.
They share this life force that unites the two, they share it, absorb it, but ultimately
it is what destroys them.
In Rest Energy (1980), they balanced each other on opposite sides of a drawn bow and
arrow, with the arrow pointed at Abramović’s heart.
Abramović’s is forced to surrender total control to Ulay.
Microphones were placed to pick up their quickening heartbeats and irregular breathing.
After four minutes, they dropped the bow.
After years of a tense relationship, they decided to mark the end their partnership
with a spiritual journey.
The piece, called The Great Wall Walk (1988), involved the two walking across sections of
the Great Wall of China.
They started at opposite ends, and after 90 days of walking 2500 km, met in the middle
to say their farewells.
It took them 8 years to gain permission from the Chinese government to perform this work,
and by the time they were able to perform it, their relationship had completely dissolved.
It was a romantic ending to the relationship, but also a reminder of how no matter what
they did, in the end, they did it alone.
On this phase of her career, Abramović said, “The main problem in this relationship was
what to do with the two artists' egos.
I had to find out how to put my ego down, as did he, to create something like a hermaphroditic
state of being that we called the death self."
I wish I could say that we were ending here, on a dramatic, but kind of romantic note,
but unfortunately there’s more.
The two have since continued their work on their own, but Abramović has garnered much
more attention worldwide, thanks to a 2010 retrospective at MoMA, a major HBO documentary,
celebrity friends like Jay Z and Lady Gaga, and even a line of Adidas commercials.
In 1999, they drew up a contract to manage their joint work.
Ulay sold his physical archive – including negatives and transparencies – to Marina,
and according to the contract, they could be used to produce saleable work with 20%
of the profit going to Ulay.
She agreed to tell him about any reproductions or sales of their work.
Here’s where it get a little sad.
In 2015, Ulay sued Abramović, alleging that she had violated their 1999 contract- that
she had withheld money from him and failed to give him proper credit for their joint
legacy.
While their works regularly sell for five or six-figures, he had been paid only four
times, and received a total of €31,000.
The court of Amsterdam found that Ulay was entitled to the royalties as stated in their
original contract, and ordered Abramović to pay Ulay over €250,000.
In addition, she was to credit joint works as “Ulay/Abramović” for works created
from 1976 to 1980, and “Abramović/Ulay” for those from 1981 to 1988.
In an interview, he said “She is not just a former business partner.
The whole oeuvre has made history.
It’s now in school books.
But she has deliberately misinterpreted things, or left my name out.”
So kind of a sad and dramatic ending for such an iconic couple, or ex-couple, of the art
world.
Hopefully everything gets sorted out, and everyone gets their proper credit.
Their collaborative series worked because of their joint efforts, their equality and
balance are what made these works full of energy and tension.
I hope you enjoyed this video on the relationship and collaboration of Marina Abramovic & Ulay.
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Thanks so much for watching and I’ll see you guys next time!