Marina Abramovic in Belgrade

I have always liked Marina Abramovic, from her earliest works to the latest ones.

Many who knew her in the legendary early years of bitter struggle now resent her grand fame and success. They consider her commercialized, cosmopolitan, a celebrity artist recycling proven successes, but they're all wrong. This is mere snob activity.

It's possible to be the cliched, true artist who is permanently poor, pure, and out of touch with the entire material world, but art snobs never notice or praise these people. They're too busy attacking Marina for not being like that. Oscar Wilde used to point out that snobs are a useful motor of society, propelling the fame machine by loudly including, excluding, over-praising and denouncing. Women artists might even get snobbishly confined to small pedestals and defined as muses rather than real artists.

But snobs will always lack Marina's creativity and painful brilliance. I appreciate Marinas direct and sharp attitude towards fame, glory, wealth, the female body and universal death. She confronts complex issues directly, in the world as it is, instead of accepting trends at face value. Her work will be noticed, disciples will follow her, but by that time she will already be elsewhere.

The grandma of performance art, as she calls herself, will soon be playing Maria Callas, the diva of opera, in her most famous death scenes. At Maria's age, and with the portfolio and life-histories of Marina-and-Maria, I feel sure that is not only the best way, but the only way. Marina Abramovic and Yoko Ono are my role models for female living artists who have transcended the many threats of fame and glory, and prevailed over suffering. Read the rest