Marina Abramovic famous quotes

A great artist has to be ready to fail.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Artist #Failing #Great Art

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.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Crush #Women #Play

Your ego can become an obstacle to your work. If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Believe #Creativity #Greatness

Artists can do whatever they want!
-- Marina Abramovic

#Artist #Want

I have always staged my fears as a way to transcend them.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Way

All my inspiration comes from life. That's how it never stops, in a way.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Inspiration #Way

Happiness comes from the full understanding of your own being.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Understanding

True love for whatever you are doing is the answer to everything.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Answers

The experience I learned was that … if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed… I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Cutting #Gun #Escaping

Theatre is fake… The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Real #Blood #Knives

We are always in the space in-between... all the spaces where you are not actually at home. You haven't arrived yet.... This is where our mind is the most open. We are alert, we are sensitive, and destiny can happen. We do not have any barriers and we are vulnerable. Vulnerability is important. It means we are completely alive and this is an extremely important space. This is for me the space from which my work generates.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Mean #Home #Destiny

To me the pain and the blood are merely means of artistic expression.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Pain #Mean #Expression

With classical ballet you are literally injuring yourself.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Ballet

To control the breathing is to control the mind. With different patterns of breathing, you can fall in love, you can hate someone, you can feel the whole spectrum of feelings just by changing your breathing.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Falling In Love #Hate #Love You

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.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Girl #Children #Who I Am

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

#Ideas #Feels #Obsessive

Because we never stop silently loving those who we once loved out loud
-- Marina Abramovic

#Loud

I am pure performance, and Robert Wilson is pure theater.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Theater #Wilson #Performances

Art comes from life, not from the studio
-- Marina Abramovic

#Art

An artist has to look at the future, to see what we can do better.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Artist #Looks

For me, the most difficult piece is the one I'm about to make.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Pieces #Difficult

Once, Picasso was asked what his paintings meant. He said, “Do you ever know what the birds are singing? You don’t. But you listen to them anyway.” So, sometimes with art, it is important just to look.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Art #Bird #Singing

In the performer's body, you don't care how you look. It doesn't matter if you're old, fat, beautiful, or ugly. It doesn't change anything. The only thing is your charisma and how you express your idea.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Beautiful #Ideas #Body

The brother of my grandfather was the patriarch of the Orthodox Church and revered as a saint. So everything in my childhood is about total sacrifice, whether to religion or to communism. This is what is engraved on me. This is why I have this insane willpower. My body is now beginning to be falling apart, but I will do it to the end. I don't care. With me it is about whatever it takes.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Brother #Fall #Sacrifice

When you're 50, the best thing to do is dance the Argentinean tango.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Tango

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.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Mother #Sleep #Night

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

#Insane #Answers #Behaviour

When I was 14, I thought I looked terrible. I wore these typical Slavic shoes with metal bottoms so you could always hear me coming and this really ugly princess skirt and blouse with the top button closed. I had a boy haircut, a baby face covered with pimples, and a really big nose.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Baby #Princess #Boys

Woody Allen has a wonderful line: 'Today I'm a star. What will I be tomorrow? A black hole?' That's very important to know - that you have the moment, then you lose the moment. You have to see your chances, you have to take them, and you also have to see when you don't have chances to take.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Stars #Black #Important

You know how you feel somebody looking at you, and you turn, and somebody actually is? It's the same at an art gallery. You're looking at one portrait, turn around, and there is a work of art directly behind you. Because it's all energy. Every single thing has energy.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Art #How You Feel #Behind You

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

#Art #Believe #Energy

Through performance, I found the possibility of establishing a dialogue with the audience through an exchange of energy, which tended to transform the energy itself. I could not produce a single work without the presence of the audience, because the audience gave me the energy to be able, through a specific action, to assimilate it and return it, to create a genuine field of energy.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Able #Fields #Return

I realise the power of art that does not hang on the walls of galleries.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Art #Wall #Doe

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

#Country

You know, everyone is always talking about plastic surgery, or the technology, what to do. I really think it's important to help yourself with the technology if you want to feel better, but I am absolutely against any kind of monstrous cuts of the body, lifting that is beyond recognition, this kind of stuff.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Cutting #Feel Better #Technology

We are used to cleaning the outside house, but the most important house to clean is yourself - your own house - which we never do.
-- Marina Abramovic

#House #Important #Cleaning

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

#Girl #Littles #Ordinary

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

#Technology #Phones #Use

Americans don't like European movies.
-- Marina Abramovic

A powerful performance will transform everyone in the room.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Powerful #Rooms #Performances

We always project into the future or reflect in the past, but we are so little in the present.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Past #Littles #Projects

The hardest thing to do is something that is close to nothing.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Hardest

From the moment you are born, you could die. I think as an artist it is important to meditate on that.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Thinking #Artist #Important

An artist should not fall in love with another artist.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Falling In Love #Fall #Artist

Cancer is an emotional disease.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Cancer #Emotional #Disease

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.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Real #Self #Ordinary

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.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Sacrifice #Artist #Years

The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, and to elevate the mind.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Artist #Giving #Mind

People put so much effort into starting a relationship and so little effort into ending one.
-- Marina Abramovic

#People #Effort #Littles

I believe so much in the power of performance I don't want to convince people. I want them to experience it and come away convinced on their own.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Believe #People #Want

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

#Feminist #Categories #Clear

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

#Art #Hate #Habit

My grandmother, when she looked at American movies, she said, 'They're all the same. In the first scene somebody shoots somebody and then everybody makes phone calls.'
-- Marina Abramovic

#Grandmother #Phones #Firsts

I didn't get paid for performances most of my life. If I did, I would be billionaire now, and I'm not.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Would Be #Billionaire #Performances

When Lady Gaga says I am her inspiration, you reach kids between 12 and 18. Now I am like a brand - jeans, Coca-Cola.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Inspiration #Kids #Jeans

I want to dominate the man's world.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Men #World #Want

You know, James Franco is one of the most interesting figures because he has no rules. He breaks all the borders.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Interesting #Borders #Break

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

#Hate #Order #Kitchen

From the very early stage when I started doing performance art in the '70s, the general attitude - not just me, but also my colleagues - was that there should not be any documentation, that the performance itself is artwork and there should be no documentation.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Art #Attitude #Documentation

What you get is the opening of your mind. I'm not preaching any new religion; I'm ritualizing everyday activities. You drink the water. You count the rice. You sit in Crystal Cave. You lie in Levitation Chamber. You push yourself to a new level.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Lying #Water #Everyday

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.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Artist #Differences #World

Today, our attention is less than the television advertisement. We're looking at six or seven problems constantly. We're living in the disturbed societies of cities. I think modern technology is one of the worst things human beings have invented.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Technology #Thinking #Cities

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.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Clothes #Self #Skins

We are actually living in a million parallel realities every single minute.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Reality #Minutes

The public is in need of experiences that are not just voyeuristic. Our society is in a mess of losing its spiritual centre.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Spiritual #Our Society #Needs

When you have so much pain, you think you will lose consciousness. If you say to yourself, ‘So what, lose consciousness,’ the pain goes away.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Pain #Thinking #Consciousness

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

#Party #Bored #People

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.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Cutting #Blood #Way

It's okay that we're not perfect. It's okay that we all have problems. It's okay to cry, to show emotions.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Perfect #Emotion #Problem

My new work deals with emptying my body: 'Boat emptying, stream entering.' This means that you have to empty the body/boat to the point where you can really be connected with the fields of energy around you. I think that men and women in our Western culture are completely disconnected from that energy, and in my new work I want to make this connection possible.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Mean #Men #Thinking

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

#Soul #Understanding #Culture

I think communication starts when words are not present at all ... I think we put so much emphasis on language, actually silence is so much more important.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Communication #Thinking #Silence

There are so many rules in the art world. I don't like rules and I break them all the time. I don't care if people think I'm overexposed. What I care about is if I'm going to run out of energy. Overexposure is only a problem if you are drained of energy and cannot come up with new ideas. Every artist has to recognize that and know when to stop for a moment.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Running #Art #Thinking

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.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Art #Giving #Firsts

Time is an illusion. Time only exists when we think about the past and the future. Time doesn't exist in the present here and now.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Thinking #Past #Illusion

It's very important that young artists push boundaries, because sometimes you have this urge to do something - like the impulsive and dangerous urges I had as a child - and if you don't follow through with it you might miss out on a developmental experience.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Children #Artist #Missing

When you have a nonverbal conversation with a total stranger, then he cant cover himself with words, he cant create a wall.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Wall #Stranger #Conversation

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.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Mother #Book #Long

I just want to create situations where people forget time.
-- Marina Abramovic

#People #Want #Forget

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.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Bridges #Play #Imagination

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

#Thinking #Artist #Idols

But what is art other than revealing human nature?
-- Marina Abramovic

#Art #Human Nature #Revealing

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

#Past #Community #Reason

If we go for the easy way, then we never change
-- Marina Abramovic

#Way #Easy #Never Change

The world doesn't need an artist who shows reality as it is
-- Marina Abramovic

#Reality #Artist #World

There's nothing more tragic than artists from the 70s still doing art from the 70s.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Art #Artist #Tragic

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.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Hate #Home #Destiny

In every culture, [there are those] shamans or medicine men who endured incredible physical pain, because it's a door opening to the subconsciousness. And the way we can actually control the pain -- it's how to control everything. This is the key.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Pain #Men #Doors

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.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Believe #Important #Stories

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.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Spiritual #Art #Leader

Talking about performance is such a strange thing because it's so immaterial. We are talking about soft matter. We are talking about something that is invisible. You can't see it. You can't touch it. You just can feel it.
-- Marina Abramovic

#Talking #Matter #Strange

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

#Afterlife #Heaven