Top 236 Quotes & Sayings by Marina Abramovic - Page 2

I believe that life is shorter; that is why we have to make experience longer.

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

You know, art is very emotional business. But mostly it becomes not emotional, the fabric of commodity. It becomes business. It becomes so many different things. Because we forgot there was emotions involved.

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

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.

You know I very much respect Yvonne Rainer, she is very important - in American dance, the entire development of modern dance, and creating a wonderful physical language.

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

Most of the time, the artists are not supposed to wear the fashion. It is always seen as a vanity. But I think I don't need to prove anything in my life. I can honestly say I love fashion and I can be many things at the same time.

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.

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.

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

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.

I'm interested in asking: 'What does feminine energy mean?' I don't have answers - I just have questions and interesting examples.

There are good artists that have children. Of course there are. They are called men.

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.

Americans don't like European movies.

So many artists say they're not aware of audience. For me is unbelievable.

I used to have a recurring dream where I was at a party in a country house, surrounded by the same people each evening. Everyone would be singing and dancing and after a while I came to know the people; though, of course, they never really existed.

To be in a magazine when you're 20 is okay, but when you do it when you're 65, it's much more fun!

If you do performance and music, it's not performance as music.

The only theatre I do is my own. Somehow, my life is the only life that I can play.

One of my aims was to be paid as well as a plumber. Plumber was better-paid than any performance artist who was always doing this for free. It is so important to make a good living from art. You know, John Cage, until he was 60, he couldn't pay electricity.

You see, what is my purpose of performance artist is to stage certain difficulties and stage the fear the primordial fear of pain, of dying, all of which we have in our lives, and then stage them in front of audience and go through them and tell the audience, 'I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my life, you can do it in yours.'

For me, performance is a holy ground. When I perform, I really step into a different state of consciousness.

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

One of the most wonderful things for me is to watch somebody else perform, where I am the audience - I love this more than ever.

The mind is crazy thing. To be focused is the most difficult thing.

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

I believe the artist has an obligation to society.

I've been criticized by my generation, artists from the '70s - and there's nothing more tragic than artists from the '70s still doing art from the '70s - because I blur all these borders between fashion and pop.

A powerful performance will transform everyone in the room.

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

People in New York never have time for anything.

With classical ballet you are literally injuring yourself.

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.

I hate studios. A studio is a black hole. I never use a studio to work. It's very artificial to go to a studio to get new ideas. You have to get new ideas from life, not from the studio. Then you go to the studio to realize the idea.

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

We make such terrible mistakes with visual choices about beauty.

The most revolutionary ideas are not sellable, but only mind-changing.

If you see a Renaissance body, this is completely ugly in this time. Everybody has to be skinny. But the Renaissance body with incredible flow of the meat everywhere, it was beauty.

I had three abortions because I was certain that it would be a disaster for my work.

I can explain my work to the cleaner or the president; it's all the same to me. I am very communist in this way.

When I taught art, I was always asked, 'How do you know you're an artist? What makes you an artist?' And to me, it's like breathing. You don't question if you breathe; you have to breathe. So if you wake up in the morning, and you have to realize an idea, and there's another idea, and another, maybe you are really an artist.

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

Performance has to be mainstream art. This is what I'm fighting for.

Performance is there, and if you are not there in that moment it happened, it just stays in the memory. It's so immaterial and something this immaterial is very difficult to collect. Its difficult to buy, its how we can buy immaterial art.

In America, everyone's always hiding their age.

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

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

In my work I have complete control, but about my life, I don't want to.

The big problem of our modern society is that we feel that we are separated from the nature. But it's just the opposite. We are interrelated and our DNA is the same. And only when human beings understand that, the nature will not be obstacle.

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

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

Once you live in New York, you can't live anywhere else. Living in Paris is like going in slow motion. It's so bourgeois. I get so bored.

I give people a space to simply sit in silence and communicate with me deeply but non-verbally.

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.

I think 21st century should be art without objects.

There's plenty of talented women. Why do men take over the important positions? It's simple. Love, family, children - a woman doesn't want to sacrifice all of that.

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

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.