''Seven Easy Pieces'' was a series of
performances
A performance is an act or process of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function.
Performance has evolved glo ...
given by artist
Marina Abramović
Marina Abramović ( sr-Cyrl, Марина Абрамовић, ; born November 30, 1946) is a Serbian conceptual and performance artist. Her work explores body art, endurance art, the relationship between the performer and audience, the limit ...
in
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
at the
Guggenheim Museum in November 2005. All performances were dedicated to Abramović's late friend
Susan Sontag
Susan Lee Sontag (; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, critic, and public intellectual. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay "Notes on "Camp", Notes on 'Ca ...
.
Although the performance art world traditionally frowns on repeating individual works, valuing their transient, ephemeral nature as intrinsic to their essence, as she aged, Abramović found herself compelled to preserve the performances that influenced her own development as an artist. Angry at seeing so many of the ideas developed in her and others' performances being appropriated without credit, including by commercial enterprises such as advertising and fashion, Abramović committed herself to archiving seven iconic works by recreating or reinterpreting them in ''Seven Easy Pieces'', but only with the expressed consent of each of the original artists or their estates. "There's nobody to keep the history straight," she told ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' in an interview published in early November 2005. "I felt almost, like, obliged. I felt like I have this function to do it."
''Seven Easy Pieces'' is available on DVD.
''Seven Easy Pieces'' comprised seven individual works – two of her own and five by other artists – performed on seven consecutive nights beginning on November 9. The combination of the individual works may be considered a primer on
post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of Power (social and poli ...
. They were, in order of performance:
Guggenheim exhibition web page for ''Seven Easy Pieces''
/ref>
*Bruce Nauman
Bruce Nauman (born December 6, 1941) is an American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives near Galisteo, New Mexico.
Life and work
...
's '' Body Pressure'' (1974)
*Vito Acconci
Vito Acconci (, ; January 24, 1940 – April 27, 2017) was an American performance art, performance, video and installation artist, whose diverse practice eventually included sculpture, architectural design, and landscape design. His performan ...
's ''Seedbed
A seedbed or seedling bed is the local soil environment in which seeds are planted. Often, it comprises not only the soil but also a specially prepared cold frame, hotbed or raised bed used to grow the seedlings in a controlled environment in ...
'' (1972)
* Valie Export's ''Action Pants: Genital Panic'' (1969)
*Gina Pane
Gina Pane (Biarritz, May 24, 1939 – Paris, March 6, 1990) was a French artist of Italian origins. She studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1960 to 1965, and was a member of the 1970s Body Art movement in France, "Art corporel." ...
's ''The Conditioning'' (1973)
*Joseph Beuys
Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( ; ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and Aesthetics, art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism and sociology. With Heinrich Böll, , Caroline Tisdall, Rober ...
's '' How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare'' (1965)
**Abramović originally intended to recreate Chris Burden
Christopher Lee Burden (April 11, 1946 – May 10, 2015) was an American artist working in performance art, sculpture, and installation art. Burden became known in the 1970s for his performance art works, including ''Shoot (Burden), Shoot'' (1971) ...
's '' Trans-Fixed'' (1974)
*Abramović's own ''Lips of Thomas'' (1975)
**Abramović originally intended to recreate her own '' Rhythm 0'' (1974)
*Abramović's own ''Entering the Other Side'' (2005)
References
External links
Interview ''New York Magazine'' - Provocateur: Marina Abramovic
DVD of ''Seven Easy Pieces'', 2010
{{Performance art
Performances