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"To me the pain and the blood are merely means of artistic expression," Marina Abramovic said after a 1975 piece in which she combed her hair until her scalp bled. The remark is quoted by James Westcott in his new biography of the performance artist, When Marina Abramovic Dies,which includes an image of the endurance test among a prodigious numberof rare and illuminating photographs from Abramovic’s exhaustiveprivate archive. Not that Westcott, a former assistant to the artist,accepts either her documentation or her rhetoric without carefulinvestigation. In his elegant narration, Abramovic, the child ofalternately disapproving and indifferent upper-class Yugoslav parents,slowly abandons academic painting in her late 20s in favor ofincreasingly masochistic action in Belgrade. Recovering after faintinginside a burning pentagram during one harrowing performance, sheimmediately runs home to meet her strict mother’s 10:00 p.m. curfew.Eventually, she flees and, with her enigmatic collaborator and lover, Ulay,wanders among European galleries by van, lives with AustralianAborigines, and walks China’s Great Wall. Along the way, readersencounter the Ramones, the Dalai Lama, and the future Bianca Jagger.Westcott says one interviewee warned him that "every time Marina tellsa story, it gets better," a possibility that only makes the epic,vulnerable portrait that emerges from his meticulous research moremoving.

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"When Marina Abramovic Dies" originally appeared in the March issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' March 2010 Table of Contents.