Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present documentary review

What is the documentary called Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present you ask? Well...

It's a film about an artist. A very different one. She calls herself a performance artist. She does things you'll see in the beginning that may have you ready to turn this film off. Seemingly, she's just seeking attention when you see her desecrating her naked body or running into walls naked. It's disturbing and alarming and not too moving. Well, ignore these things if you must. Remain and watch this martyr turned art world sensation.

The basis and the building leads to something wholly different. This

art show on which the documentary is based illuminates one of those rare instances where art and commerce meet with success. Usually the latter corrupts and buries the former. This experiment of Marina's is a spiral staircase in which the two rely upon each other to get to the proper locale.

The experiment, you ask? Let's see..

Photo courtesy of Andrew Russeth

It's pretentious. It's absurd. It's flamboyant. It's presumptuous. It's so far out of the normal realm that we keep ourselves confined to. It almost begs to be called insane. Yet, it is none of these things in full delivery. It merely broaches them, due to our confines, and moves on. With them, and all of our confinement baggage, in tow, dripping off of it, look by look. One onlooker turned provocateur at a time.

It's overall effect, the "Artist is Present" experiment with all of it's charm and dignity and grace hands us something much more than the painting in the Museum of Modern Art around her could hand us, as Marina had set out hoping. Her gaze upon gaze with regular art gallery goers repeats itself, yet with such stunning grip that it dislodges the viewer from their set-upon spot. It moves the bounds of human exchange, if said human is willing to fully enter that vacuum that she so patiently occupies. It assaults all we've decreed about "knowing someone" or "meeting someone." There's a layer she's found that lies exposed for hours at a time in a gallery of static things. A nerve we don't want touched. A way we've turned away from.

Marina Abramovic is an explorer. a poet. a fake. then naked. turned visionary. turned simpleton. flipped back. beacon. runner. avoider. pontificator. necessity.

Never has a documentary affected me so viciously – in mysterious buildup, to ultimately, a wind tunnel trip to the place she's looking out from. There she stays on this perch that she's found, and brought anyone sensible enough to wander up. Few paintings I know of could accomplish as much. And no documentary I know of could convey art more unavoidably.

I defy anyone to watch it and not come away slightly askew. To not walk away with a different hitch. To not sit, unaware of the depths of a single sitting.

Just sit back, and watch it already.