Yvonne Rainer Denounces Marina Abramovic's Planned MOCA Gala Performance as "Grotesque"
Yvonne Rainer Denounces Marina Abramovic's Planned MOCA Gala Performance as "Grotesque"
The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art’s annual gala is one of the most highly anticipated events of the fall art season — previous editions have included such headliners as Lady Gaga and guests like Brangelina — and this year it may also be among the most controversial. The November 12 party, which boasts performance artist Marina Abromavic as creative director and musician Debbie Harry as an honoree, is already ruffling some feathers in the local art community. Renowned dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer has written a letter to MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch indicting Abramovic’s planned performance for the event, which she calls “grotesque” and “verg[ing] on economic exploitation.” The complaint was also signed by a number of art figures including Douglas Crimp, Tom Knechtel, and Monica Majoli.
Rainer was compelled to write to Deitch after hearing an account of the audition process from a friend, who told Rainer that she felt the performers were being “taken advantage of.” According to the friend's emailed account, which was obtained by ARTINFO, performers will spend three hours with their their heads protruding through the gala's tabletops, kneeling on Lazy Susans below to slowly rotate in circles while maintaining eye contact with guests. Other performers will lay nude on tables with fake skeletons on top of them, recreating Abramovic's famous "Nude With Skeleton" performance, as reperformers did at her MoMA retrospective. Participants will be paid $150 and receive a one-year MOCA membership. “Of course we were warned that we will not be able to leave to pee, etc. That diners may try to feed us, give us drinks, fondle us under the table, etc., but will be warned not to,” read the email. “Whatever happens, we are to remain in performance mode and unaffected.”
This “grotesque spectacle” of a performance is "reminiscent of 'Salo,' Pasolini’s controversial film of 1975 that dealt with sadism and sexual abuse of a group of adolescents at the hands of a bunch of post-war fascists," Rainer writes in her letter. "Reluctant as I am to dignify Abramovic by mentioning Pasolini in the same breath, the latter at least had a socially credible justification in the cause of anti-fascism." Abramovic and MOCA's director and curators, she adds, don't "see the egregious associations for the performers, who, though willing, will be exploited nonetheless.” As for the performers, “their desperate voluntarism says something about the generally exploitative conditions of the art world such that people are willing to become victims of a celebrity artist in the hopes of somehow breaking into the show biz themselves. And at sub-minimal wages for the performers, the event verges on economic exploitation and criminality.”
“Wow,” Abramovic told ARTINFO after being read the letter. “I hope the performance itself will bring some kind of dignity, serenity, and concentration to the normal situation of a gala, and actually change the energy of the space and bring the performance into an everyday life situation.” She added that it is difficult to judge the performance without having seen it: “All these accusations, you can’t have them before you actually experience the situation and see how I can change the atmosphere, that's my main purpose,” she said, before adding, “I really respect Yvonne.”
Rainer declined to offer additional comment beyond her letter, though she noted that she had not been invited nor does she plan to attend the gala. Rainer’s 1965 “No Manifesto,” which codified the tenets of her choreography, mandated that dance should say “No to spectacle.... No to the involvement of performer or spectator…. No to seduction of spectator by the wiles of the performer.”
MOCA’s galas, by contrast, are nothing if not headline-worthy spectacles. This year, the gala will be co-chaired by television producer Maria Bell and megacollector Eli Broad, while Larry Gagosian and Dasha Zhukova will serve as honorary chairs. Individual tickets range from $2,500 to $10,000, and table prices range from $25,000 to $100,000. A representative from MOCA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
[Update: At the time ARTINFO originally published this article, we understood that Rainier had already sent the letter to MOCA. In fact, though word of it had already begun to leak out, she had not. We regret the error.]
[Update: The Los Angeles Times got a response from MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch, who reportedly has invited Rainer to attend a rehearsal later today. “For me this is the way the art world works, it's all about dialogue,” he said. “I would just hope that when people make allegations like this, they would actually come to see the performance and talk to the performers.” He noted that Rainer’s information came from one performer “with her own personal agenda, who does not represent the hundreds of people who applied for this.”]
Comments
Rainer is right. This is a culmination of exploitative spectacle that has lately accompanied the unsavory paradigm of "the artist is present". It is bread and circuses for the prurient appetites of the art plutocrats, and one more example of the Deitch/Biesenbach "macht show" disease. The image of a performer's head protruding through a hole in the table, for the delectation of the uber art patrons, recalls the callous cruelty, in certain Asian cuisines, of eating fresh monkey brains, spooned out of the skull while the monkey is still alive and pinioned at the center of the table.
It's like a purple-assed baboon, Dr. Benway, William Burroughs nightmare come to life.
I generally applaud Abramovic. In this case, I would prefer to decry her enablers, who hitch their curatorial ambitions to her stardom and rubber stamp her decisions, rather than offering a considered dialectic.
I dunno. $250 (the fee + membership) for a few hours of work isn't that bad.
But Abramovic is deluded if she thinks that she will actually bring " dignity, serenity, and concentration" to this bling-fest. Regardless of the skeletons or the existential themes, this is performance art as entertainment. It is deeply degrading her own work to repackage it for the distracted consumption of a group of people who will be far more interested in what designer clothes people are wearing and where the waiter went with their champagne glass.
The performers themselves are going into this by choice, and it's no different from signing up to model underwear or pole dance---things that pretty faces in LA and NYC do all the time to make ends meet.
But when Abramovic agreed to do this, she sold her own integrity down the river.
I don't feel any sympathy for the performers, who are choosing to do this. No different from the bare chested guys who stand outside of Abercrombie and Fitch, or pole dancers, or models of any kind. This is what people with pretty faces and great bodies do in cities like LA and NYC to make ends meet. They're getting paid over $200 (incl. the membership) for a few hours of work. Not too shabby.
Abramovic, however, has stumbled badly. She has repackaged her meaningful artwork as light entertainment for the wealthy. She's deluded if she thinks that her work will change anything about the gala. Skeletons and existential themes will be mere background in the glitz of designer dresses and bold-faced names. Abramovic has become a brand, and now she's just making cheap knock-offs.
The real question is why she agreed to do this in the first place. How much is she getting paid?
I'm sorry, but to think that performers are being paid for "a few hours of work" shows that you do not understand how performance is made and enacted. Professional performers who are hired are hired for NUMEROUS hours of rehearsal as well as the "few hours of performance," and while I do not know the details of how many hours of rehearsal are involved in this work, I can assure you that it is more than "a few". The case that Rainer is making regarding artist compensation is that when all the hours of work - rehearsal AND performance are tallied up, the pay is unconscionably low, let alone the working conditions themselves. I agree with her that it is telling regarding how little pay there ever is for live performers (except celebrities like Abramovic herself - I too would like to know how much she is getting paid!- and pop stars), even with high levels of commitment and expertise, that so many people would audition for the "privilege" of participating in work that is demeaning for slave labor wages.
I don't feel any sympathy for the performers, who are choosing to do this. No different from the bare chested guys who stand outside of Abercrombie and Fitch, or pole dancers, or models of any kind. This is what people with pretty faces and great bodies do in cities like LA and NYC to make ends meet. They're getting paid over $200 (incl. the membership) for a few hours of work. Not too shabby.
Abramovic, however, has stumbled badly. She has repackaged her meaningful artwork as light entertainment for the wealthy. She's deluded if she thinks that her work will change anything about the gala. Skeletons and existential themes will be mere background in the glitz of designer dresses and bold-faced names. Abramovic has become a brand, and now she's just making cheap knock-offs.
The real question is why she agreed to do this in the first place. How much is she getting paid?
I don't feel any sympathy for the performers, who are choosing to do this. No different from the bare chested guys who stand outside of Abercrombie and Fitch, or pole dancers, or models of any kind. This is what people with pretty faces and great bodies do in cities like LA and NYC to make ends meet. They're getting paid over $200 (incl. the membership) for a few hours of work. Not too shabby.
Abramovic, however, has stumbled badly. She has repackaged her meaningful artwork as light entertainment for the wealthy. She's deluded if she thinks that her work will change anything about the gala. Skeletons and existential themes will be mere background in the glitz of designer dresses and bold-faced names.
Abramovic has become a brand, and now she's just making cheap knock-offs. The real question is why she agreed to do this in the first place. How much is she getting paid?
I'm glad to see a diatribe going on between well-established artists. I admire Yvonne Rainer's effort to historicize performance and her dedication to the field. I can't wait to see the letter in its published format.
On the other hand, for the commenters who think that it's a "choice" for pole-dancers or performers to endure humiliation, I completely disagree. Making a living as an artist is a tough pursuit and now more than ever with the economic climate. It's not up to "choice," it's up to institutions and artists hiring others to practice responsible labor practices; art is not a discipline so separate from the labor laws of any other practice. Sorry, but we in the arts are not entirely special.
The problem is not just Marina Abramovic. Rather it is efforts towards re-staging performance that ambitious curator/enablers, anxious to advance their careers, have grafted onto her original work, to make sure it continues once she is gone. The idea of substituting new, younger performers is what leads to the appearance of inequities and the charge of abuse of privilege. When Abramovic herself was the performer, willingly suffering the slings and arrows for the sake of her art, the worst charge that could be leveled was masochism. But when other bodies - young, powerless, on display for the delectation of the powerful - are drafted for the sake of aggrandizing the arts institution, and for the ambitions of art plutocrats, there is obvious exploitation.
I agree.
Great art often stimulates controvery and discussion. Marina Abramovic does this quite well and I've enjoyed seeing her performances for many years. It would be very interesting to attend this event, and besides, at least at this high priced gala, there might be somebody interesting to talk to right in the center of the table :) In addition, she is employing people, and unlike most jobs, they won't have to spend any money on their working attire. But joking aside, I would suggest as Marina did, to go with an open mind and see for yourself, and don't take it so seriously. It is rather amusing how nudity in art still bothers people...and how long have nude sculptures & paintings existed? I do understand what Ranier and Kaplan have concerns with, and they certainly have reasons to feel that way. But it is a fund-raiser party, and should probably be considered that first before it is considered art. And the "macht show" disease as mentioned really exists because people make a big deal out of it. Dismiss it, but don't compare it to eating monkey brains, as that is really drawing unnecessary attention....unless of course you are secretly working for Deitch!
I'm trying to imagine how conjuring the image of eating live monkey brains could make me an apologist for Deitch, rather than a detractor.
I believe Abramovic was urged to become an impresario of her work, rather than merely its performer, by curator/enablers who hope to piggyback on her art stardom. By herself, she might have come up with the idea of substituting other bodies for her own, but it reaches an apotheosis through the institutional imperative of creating a continuing niche for performance art on the museum level. The sacrificial mode, of drafting others to recapitulate an original action, is akin to the institutionalization of religion, from a direct encounter with an original charismatic leader to the rituals and protocols of a Church, from Jesus to Paul.
The key problem here isn't with Abramovic, though it does seem that she has turned from a confrontational artist into a director of titillating spectacles. The larger issue is Jeffrey Deitch's directorship of MOCA, the nature of which is increasingly clear with each passing month. Evidently, MOCA now sees movie stars, pop musicians, fashionistas and wealthy socialites as central players in contemporary art. This leaves the visual artists as set decorators whose role is to serve up a glamour-enhancing backdrop of groovy street graphics, trippy video projections, shiny sculptural baubles or "edgy" presentations featuring naked babes and hunks. One can't be surprised that serious-minded artists and critics are appalled (and, perhaps, saddened) by this turn of events.
They both have a point.
On the Abramov's side there are performers out there who would love to do this kind of performing and do it for free usually. $150 doesn't go very far either. There are far more weird things that people do for fun.
On Yvonne's side, dance has reached a very strange place where there are so many dancers and so few choreographers. And mostly dancers want to survive on dance so they won't take a job unless they get paid, or they join a company they don't even like and they don't even get paid for because they just want to dance. So there is a segment of young performers who would totally do this performance not because they want to sit around naked but because they want to be a performer and the money seems right.
When it comes down to it, who are we protecting by stopping Abramov? Are these young artists unable to think for themselves? Just because something looks exploitative doesn't mean it is, maybe it's just not for you?