Why is this art? Why is anything art? What makes a performance become a piece of art work?
Marina Abramovic stated that with every performance she does or with every exhibition she puts on, people always ask her the same question. Why is this art?
Art is only presented as that when the public brand it as a piece of art work. Even for the person asking the question, they ask, why is it art? Meaning that they see it as art even if they don’t realise, mainly because society has already proclaimed it to be a piece of art work.
The concept of art has changed considerably in such a short amount of time. Art used to be something so iconic, so incredible, such as the Mona Lisa, Starry Night, The Scream, The Creation of Adam or even The Last Supper. To go from that to a woman, on her own, sitting at a table for ten hours a day, six days a week for three months, for a total of seven hundred and fifty hours, is astonishing. What Marina did is challenging, and is hard to accomplish, however the idea of art is definitely changed with artist such as Marina Abramovic.
For me things are only seen as art because of the person who created it. Would ‘The Artist Is Present’ be as successful as it is if I were to do it? If I sat at a table and advertised it around and encouraged people to sit opposite me and do nothing but stare at me, would it be considered outstanding? Would I have the same number of audience members running to sit opposite me (including James Franco and Orlando Bloom who actually went to see it) as Marina Abramovic? Marina is extremely well known in the industry of art and is considered to be one of the great minds of art.
‘Site-determined’, ‘site-oriented’, ‘site-referenced’, ‘site-conscious’, ‘site-responsive’ and ‘site-related’ are some new terms that have emerged in recent years among many artists and critics to account for the various permutations of site-specific art in the present. Site-specific is not the only site based performance that artists have created. Site-specific art means for artwork to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account when creating the performance.
Work cited:
Abramovic, M. (2010) The Artist Is Present.
Kwon, M. (2002) One Place After Another, Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. 1st paperback edition. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.