Best 126 quotes of Marina Abramovic on MyQuotes

Marina Abramovic

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    Marina Abramovic

    A great artist has to be ready to fail.

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    Marina Abramovic

    Americans aren't accepting of black humor, it's terrible.

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    Marina Abramovic

    Artists should never think of themselves as an idol. Fame is a side effect of one's work.

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    Marina Abramovic

    Because of technology, we don't develop telepathy. We don't use telepathy, but use, you know, the mobile phones. Why?

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    Marina Abramovic

    Being an artist is not easy - I have always said that to the students I have taught over the years. It's a huge sacrifice.

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    Marina Abramovic

    But what is art other than revealing human nature?

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    Marina Abramovic

    Cancer is an emotional disease.

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    Marina Abramovic

    Dali Lama said, 'when you open the heart of the person with humor, you can tell him the most truth. But if you tell him truth without humor, the heart closes.'

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    Marina Abramovic

    Don't even ask me why. I do not know, I have no answer to this insane behaviour.

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    Marina Abramovic

    Do you know what's most interesting? Working with the very strong restrictions of the institution. In the Renaissance, the aristocrats would order paintings from the artist. They would order the Crucifixion of Jesus. The restrictions were amazing. Jesus had to be in the middle, three apostles on the left, four apostles on the right - and still you had masterpieces. It's really interesting to work within restriction, and see what you can do with restriction.

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    Marina Abramovic

    Even now, I have traces of the good little girl. When I am not performing, for instance, I am really very quiet and ordinary.

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    Marina Abramovic

    Every party is the same, too many people, too little food, and you have to wait around. I'm extremely bored with parties.

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    Marina Abramovic

    First of all, to do performance art, you really have to give 100 percent. I only know that I have to give 100 percent and then what happens, happens.

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    Marina Abramovic

    Galás is a great artist with a very powerful voice.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I always do big birthday things. In three years, I'm 70. I'm going to do something outrageous. In America, everyone's always hiding their age.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I always sent my mother all these huge books I made. When my mother died, I was cleaning her cupboard, and these big books were only 20 pages long. She edited out, maybe burned, every single photograph where I'm naked.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I am not a therapist. I am not a spiritual leader. These elements are in the art: it is therapeutic, spiritual, social and political - everything. It has many layers. But art has to have many layers. If it doesn't, then forget it.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I am obsessive always, even as a child. On one side is this strict orthodox religion, on the other is communism, and I am this little girl pulled between the two. It makes me who I am. It turns me into the kind of person that Freud would have a field day with, for sure.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I am only interested in the ideas that become obsessive and make me feel uneasy. The ideas that I'm afraid of.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I am pure performance, and Robert Wilson is pure theater.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I am very clear that I am not a feminist. It puts you into a category and I don't like that.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I believe stories are very important to all performances. The life story of the performer shapes their work, and the life stories of the audience alter how they receive the work, what they read into the performer.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I believe that life is shorter; that is why we have to make experience longer.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I didn't give any instruction to the video, because it was a new medium. I didn't know what to tell him; it was so young. I did the piece and immediately after the piece, I wanted to see the material.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I don't know anything about the afterlife because I haven't been there yet.

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    Marina Abramovic

    If we consider art as oxygen in our society, we have to deliver this oxygen.

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    Marina Abramovic

    If we go for the easy way, then we never change.

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    Marina Abramovic

    If you are really true to yourself and really follow your intuition in the most rigorous way, there is a moment that becomes universal, that reaches everybody. That’s the real magic of Björk-she teaches us the courage to be ourselves.

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    Marina Abramovic

    If you have to do durational work, you have to train! No bullshit. You can't do it for three months. You can do it for five hours, 10 hours, and then you have three months rest. If this is your job, you have to be flexible.

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    Marina Abramovic

    If you look at the lives of artists, sitting in nature, painting, having the freedom. I think it's over. I think we're living in such a difficult moment of human development. Artists have more responsibility than ever before.

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    Marina Abramovic

    If you're a baker, making bread, you're a baker. If you make the best bread in the world, you're not an artist, but if you bake the bread in the gallery, you're an artist. So the context makes the difference.

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    Marina Abramovic

    If you're a woman, it's almost impossible to establish a relationship. You're too much for everybody. It's too much. The woman always has to play this role of being fragile and dependent. And if you're not, they're fascinated by you, but only for a little while. And then they want to change you and crush you. And then they leave.

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    Marina Abramovic

    If you see a Renaissance body, this is completely ugly in this time. Everybody has to be skinny. But the Renaissance body with incredible flow of the meat everywhere, it was beauty.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I had a very difficult relationship with my mother. She used to wake me up in the middle of the night if I wasn't sleeping straight and was messing up the sheets. Now when I stay in hotels I sleep so straight they don't even think I've used the bed.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I had so much fear of blood, and the first thing I did was to cut myself to see what happens. That's the only way to rebuild yourself.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I had to leave some traces. In the beginning, I would give complete instructions to the photographer. In the '70s, people would come to photograph your work and you would just end up with this crazy material that had nothing to do with your work; maybe I'd pick up two or three photographs that were the closest to the idea. This is why when you look at the '70s, you see much less documentation and really bad material. The material will become misleading to what the piece was.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I hate kitchens. I don't understand these enormous American kitchens that take up half the living room and then they just order pizza.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I hate repetition. Even when I am home and have to buy milk, I go a different way each time to avoid having a habit of anything. Habits are really bad. So to me it is really important to live in what I call the spaces in-between. Bus stations, trains, taxis or waiting rooms in airports are the best places because you are open to destiny, you are open to everything and anything can happen.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I hate studio. For me, studio is a trap to overproduce and repeat yourself. It is a habit that leads to art pollution.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I have a problem with being a hero, but that's another problem.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I have found that long durational art is really the key to changing consciousness. On such a deep level. Not just the performer, but the one looking at it.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I just want to create situations where people forget time.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I made a tape recording of a bridge collapsing and I wanted to play it suddenly and very loudly when people were walking over a big bridge in Belgrade. The council forbid it. Their imagination is tiny; mine is big. I want always to shake everything up.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I'm interested in utopian communities of the past. Many of them didn't survive and I'm examining closely the reasons they failed.

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    Marina Abramovic

    Immaterial art is the strongest because there's no obstacle; there's just energy, and I believe in energy.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I'm talking about intellectually and emotionally challenging, but at the same time it's actually not that challenging. So there's this dichotomy.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I never say Serbia. I always say I come from a country that no longer exists.

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    Marina Abramovic

    In every ancient culture, there are rituals to mortify the body as a way of understanding that the energy of the soul is indestructible.

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    Marina Abramovic

    I notice if I'm too fat or if I'm too ugly or there's skin hanging or whatever. When my clothes start not fitting, I get really self-conscious about what I eat.

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    Marina Abramovic

    In real life, you just work for the ordinary self, but in the front of audience you become the superself. That's a completely different thing.