Raised in Yugoslavia, legendary performance artist Marina Abramovic now makes her primary residence in New York and in the Hudson Valley.
"Candidly and vividly sharing her personal struggles as well as her
artistic and spiritual discoveries, Abramovic presents a uniquely
intense and affecting art memoir."—Booklist, starred
review
“Enchanting and emotionally raw, Walk Through Walls is an honest,
gripping, and profound look into the heart and brilliant mind of
one of the quintessential artists of the postmodern era.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Marina has lived like an unstoppable force of nature, with the
kind of power that leaves me feeling breathless and
disquieted—while at the same time profoundly impressed, awed, and
inspired. As I turn the pages of her book, I hear her voice in my
head, as if she were actually narrating the words. When Marina
speaks, it sounds as if you’re listening to a legendary folktale
from the ancient landscapes of the Balkan Mountains. Her voice is
soothing, calm, and centered. It belies the trauma, fear, and
darkness coiled at the root of her impulse to express and
expunge.” —Annie Lennox, Vanity Fair
“In her new memoir, Walk Through Walls, [Marina Abramović] exposes
herself as provocatively and fearlessly in language as she has done
for many years in her largely nonverbal performance art. Her
page-turner of a narrative [is] at times shocking…genuinely moving,
and always coruscatingly honest.” —Elle
“Walk Through Walls gives the impression that the phrase ‘real
talk’ may have been coined solely for its author Marina Abramović.
The provocative performance artist pulls no punches looking back
over her rough childhood and prolific public career. But it’s not
all dark recollections. There’s plenty of wry wit in her memoir as
well, as she reveals insights into her various projects and
processes.” —BUST
“Walk Through Walls testifies to larger struggles than those
of a young, visionary performance artist in an object-oriented art
world…It is hard not to read Abramović’s work as an unconscious
enactment of upending patriarchal norms.” —Los Angeles Review of
Books
“Abramović may be the only superstar performance artist in the
world at the moment, and…the book itself has the veneer of an
ambitious performance piece, as Abramović exposes her deepest
personal wounds and places them next to her artistic triumphs, in
order to create a kind of epic mythology around her work. The
author turns blank pages into a museum of the self, cutting herself
open for the sake of the narrative. But in Abramović’s case, the
performance feels even more extreme. She has actually bled for her
life story, onto pristine gallery floors….This Marina is the most
charming one, the voice that makes Walk Through Walls propulsively
readable.”—New Republic
"[Walk Through Walls] is really close to what it’s like to
spend a weekend with her: Abramovic is funny, generous, and
vituperative, a raconteur and comedian and the sometimes sad-sack
hero of the epic tale of her mad life."—New York Magazine
“Marina’s role as an artist, she believes, with a hubris that can
sound naïve and a humility that disarms any impulse to resent it,
is to lead her spectators through an anxious passage to a place of
release from whatever has confined them.” —Judith
Thurman, The New Yorker
“Abramović’s story is thoroughly detailed, with brutally honest
descriptions of her life and performance pieces, all providing deep
insights into her work….an informative, eye-opening look at the
larger world of art.”—Library Journal
"The memoir’s most powerful moments come
when Abramović shares the most intimate details of the
romantic heartaches she’s endured. Marina pulls no punches about
the men she’s loved and the artist feels feels more present than
ever."—Smithsonian Magazine
“Walk Through Walls reads as a frank and straightforward retelling
of a life story…Where is the dividing line that separates life and
art? That question, and tension, make this an electrifying read.”
—BookPage
"...There is something intensely enthralling about Abramović’s
simple, matter-of-factly candor in surveying, without belaboring,
the traumatic formative experiences despite which — and, to a large
extent, because of which — she became the person and artist she
is."—Brainpickings
"An entertaining page-turner dotted with juicy details . . . teems
with that wonderfully jumbled, delightful, complicated mix of art
and life.”—The Daily Beast
"Walk Through Walls is...as enthralling and powerful as [Marina's]
career and work."—Riveter's
"[Walk Through Walls is] rawly intimate and weirdly
mesmeric...quietly revelatory."—The Observer (UK)
“Walk Through Walls is the story of a relentlessly independent
artist thwarted in her quest for total connection with one person
who eventually achieves it with thousands. Marina’s magic derives
from an emerging ‘method’ that involves tests of endurance and
deprivation more commonly associated with Navy Seal training than
with the world of modern art. Just as her performances are
impossible to turn away from, I could not put down this book.”
—Tom Reiss, Pulitzer and PEN award-winning author of The Black
Count and The Orientalist
“Marina Abramović is famous for fiercely throwing herself, body and
soul, into transformation through her art. In this intimate memoir,
I hear her voice as I read. She confesses, confides, complains,
instructs, and reflects with intelligence and humor on her
difficult but ultimately magical life and liberating
work.” —Willem Dafoe
“Abramović is the most celebrated performance/conceptual artist in
the world, and she’s probably the only one with a sense of humor.”
—Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times UK
“Walk Through Walls is beautiful, panoramic, touching, deep. I
really love and admire the way Marina confronts all the weird
contradictions of myth mixing with daily life. She manages to say
personal as well as self-critical things about herself while still
making a self-portrait that is rich and full of real self-respect.
What a life!” —Laurie Anderson
“In The Heart Sutra, Buddha says, ‘Our life on earth is like a
morning star, a bubble on water, a drop of dew, lightning in the
summer sky, a dream in this floating world.’ For Marina Abramović,
there is no difference between art and life, life is a dream while
it lasts, an absolute presence made in a vacuum.” —Alejandro
Jodorowsky
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