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Category: Visual Arts

Cindy Sherman

by Eline/January 20, 2009April 23, 2010/Photography

Cindy Sherman seems to use her body as a mean to ridicule and criticise the modern woman’s place in life. Picture upon picture she plays different women, or at least the stereotype of one. She’s quickly judged as a feminist artist while, in fact, Cindy claims not to want to make statements. Yet this doesn’t mean her work isn’t feminist: “The work is what it is and hopefully it’s seen as feminist work, or feminist-advised work, but I’m not going to go around espousing theoretical bullshit about feminist stuff”. In contrary to many modern artists she simply lets her work speak for itself. Not only is she averse to explaining the symbolism in her work but she also succeeds in letting us understand at first glance what her works is about. Even for the inerudites among us! And that’s why I love her.

In Untitled Film Stills she seems to have blatantly copied a scene of a well-known movie yet she has improvised everything. What attracts me most to this series is that Cindy captivates an entire story of a could-be film in one single shot.

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One of my favourite series on the other hand is the Centerfold/Horizontals in which she exposes girls as the most sensitive and feeble beings on the planet. The emotion displayed is absolute divine eye-candy for me.

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And of her most recent work I greatly enjoy the rather hilarious yet still heart-catching Hollywood/Hampton Types series.

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Yet what the series I love most must be History Portraits/Old Masters in which she models as the most famous works of art.

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Maybe it’s because she now did blatantly copy everything. I adore the colours, composition and emotion displayed but I’m afraid I only appreciate the meaning behind it.

Marina Abramovic

by Eline/January 20, 2009June 9, 2014/Performance

Marina Abramovic’s first art teacher came into her work room, cut off a piece of canvas, threw it on the floor, splashed glue on it, sand, red and black pigment, gasoline and set it on fire! ‘This is a sunset’, he said.

Later on she gave up painting when she felt she had perfected the technique and could no longer improve. Then she flung herself into Body Art. In one of her first performances she lays her hand on white paper, takes a knife and quickly starts stabbing between the spaces of her fingers. Going faster and faster she naturally ends up stabbing herself. She has recorded this sound and starts the cycle anew, now with the tape playing her previous stabbings, she tried to repeat the mistakes she made in the past. The first few times fail but later on she gets the grip, she becomes rhythm. She never completed this test because she was afraid to use the twentieth knife since she thought she’d stab herself in the chest. “That stab would be the climax”.
In another performance she made herself into an object. For six hours visitors could do whatever they wanted with her. She brought along several objects such as make up, pencils, flowers, knifes, a gun… At one point a man took the gun, loaded it, held it to her head and started pressing the trigger. “He wanted to see if I’d go along, and I did. But he stopped, I didn’t; he was frustrated, I wasn’t.

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Well, I know what you’re thinking, this woman is insane. I thought the same. But then I came across one little sentence that made me rethink my pessimist opinion: “[I want my] audience to get aware of their own existence. I use my body as a tool, an object. With that I must clarify that they’re numb. Something has to start.” So she isn’t a narcissistic masochist, she simply wants to make people more aware, more alive? It’s true when you see certain performances of her on tape that you feel more alive, you think ‘Oh no! What is this woman doing? Isn’t she hurting?’ As a human being you empathise and if you watch her you get hurt yourself. And we all know pain is one of the strongest feelings that make us feel alive.

In the contrary to happenings -which are purely politically provoking-, performances are meditative; they have a vague sense of spirituality. The artists give themselves up -their bodies at least- to make others aware of life. Or maybe even to makes themselves aware of living. I think this is wonderful yet I still don’t know if I agree and she makes me doubt about my personal definition of art. However she does appeal to my inner voyeur and I am a little fascinated of the performances she did with her former boyfriend, Ulay. I didn’t find any videos of Marina’s solo performances but luckily there are some of her together with Ulay. Check them out for yourself, beware for the boringness though.

They bonded via their performances for years. Sadly, in The Great Walk they would both walk four thousand kilometres on the Great Wall of China towards each other but instead of a Chinese wedding ceremony on their reunification Marina would break up with Ulay.

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Strange lady that Marina.

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