Shortly after her career-spanning exhibition opened at the Royal Academy on Piccadilly last month, Marina AbramoviÄ received an anonymous letter from a gallery-goer. The Serbian performance artist has had many terrible reviews since she emerged from Yugoslavia in the late 1960s, naked, bleeding, defiant. Back then, as she puts it, ‘Everyone thought what I was doing was trash’, or else demanded to know how, for example, carving a pentagram into her abdomen while surrounded by flames was supposed to be ‘art’.
She has become something of a connoisseur of bad reviews. The Royal Academy letter, however, was a particular treasure and immediately endeared her to the London public. ‘It’s amazing — it’s priceless!’ she says with heavy Slavic inflection, her voice crackling with dark mischief. ‘Can you read it with your beautiful British accent?’ She hands me her phone and I obey: ‘Dear Sir/Madam, I feel that this new exhibition is reaching a new low and cannot for the life of me understand why the Academy considers its content art. Even Tracey Emin never stooped as low as this. We are being swamped by all forms of media, even terrestrial TV, with what can only be called soft porn at best. Are you happy to contribute to the degradation of the nation?’
