Well, this is bizarre.
After accusing Jay Z of soliciting her support and then abandoning his end of their agreed-upon deal, performance artist Marina Abramovic has, through her institute, apologised to the rapper.
On Monday, Spike Art magazine published an interview with Abramovic. She said that she agreed to collaborate with Jay Z to adapt The Artist is Present, far and away her most well-known performance piece, for the Picasso Baby music video. It was a big deal. It debuted on HBO as a performance art film. It was so cool, so charming to see Jay Z interacting with and reacting to friends and strangers alike, which he did for six hours at New York’s Pace Gallery, just to have it boiled down to less than 10 minutes of film.
But the best part was when he and Abramovic touched foreheads and looked straight into each other’s eyes. Jay Z had bridged the gap between otherworldliness and accessibility, all with a very visible co-sign from a Serious Artist.
All Abramovic asked for in return was that Jay Z donate to her eponymous institute. She was raising money for it at the time with a Kickstarter campaign. Like she had done for Lady Gaga, Abramovic gave Jay’s foray into performance art credibility. Her presence served as inoculation against sneering dismissal.
And then two years later, she said that Jay Z never contributed to the institute. “He just completely used me,” she said.
“In the end it was only a one-way transaction,” Abramovic told the magazine. “I will never do it again, that I can say. Never. I was really naive in this kind of world. It was really new to me, and I had no idea that this would happen. It’s so cruel, it’s incredible. I will stay away from it for sure.”
This was very odd, given that the Guardian reported in 2013 that not only had Jay Z contributed to the fund-raising campaign, but that Lady Gaga had as well.
The institute, and by extension, Abramovic, has issued an apology. “Marina Abramovic was not informed of Shawn ‘Jay Z’ Carter’s donation from two years ago when she recently did an interview with Spike magazine in Brazil,” the institute said in a statement to the New York Times. “We are sincerely sorry to both Marina Abramovic and Shawn ‘Jay Z’ Carter for this, and since then we have taken to appropriate actions to reconcile this matter.”
Jay. Marina. You guys are better than this.
This could have been a total non-issue if celebrity artists would just passive-aggressively text each other the way normal people do.
Is anyone available to call Gaga and ask her if Abramovic texts like a regular person? Upon further consideration, we’ve realised this is the wrong question. Here’s what we should have asked: Does Abramovic text at all?
This whole matter smells a bit fishy, no? Perhaps it’s a bit of media manipulation performance art in advance of an Abramovic project that’s being released exclusively on Tidal.
Please don’t let this be a hoax to promote Tidal. No. Just no.
