Years ago, Allan and I visited the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. Marcelle’s mom, Althea who worked there at the time, gave us complimentary tickets to see the collections and the exhibitions. Tim Burton was exhibiting the amazing sketches he did for the movies Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands, and Batman. ..to name a few. He is dark and his characters are scary…but his vision and creativity cannot be denied.

We visited the William Kentridge exhibit – displaying the South African’s works on apartheid and politics. The charcoal drawings that he animated for film were thought provoking, but at times, the point escaped me.

But these exhibits paled dramatically in comparison to performance artist Marina Abramovic’s exhibition “The Artist Is Present” and I do mean EXHIBITION!!!

The exhibit begins with Marina sitting at a table in the atrium of the museum – staring straight ahead for hours on end. Visitors are encouraged, one at a time, to sit across from her at the table and mediate as well. After taking this all in for a few minutes, we ascended to the sixth floor to view the rest of the exhibit.

In order to get in, you had two choices:

1. Walk through a large entrance way.

2. Walk through a smaller doorway where a man and a woman, both naked, are standing face to face, staring at each other and you have to pass sideways between them.

Of course, we all opted for door number two. The male and the female were both well endowed and so brushing up against protruding parts was unavoidable. As I started to embark on my entrance, I turned to face the male and began my sidestep to go through the doorway. Too late did I realize that the entrance was narrower then I anticipated, but on the bright side, I would have had a place to hold my tote bag.

Once inside, the presentations were even more bizarre. One exhibit had two men sitting on chairs back to back with their long hair entwined. They do not speak but just stare straight ahead. I did wonder if they had some sort of “heads up” notification (no pun intended) for each other if one was about to sneeze. I mean really…during a gesundheit, their heads could be snapped backwards with such velocity it would cause whiplash!

Further into the exhibit were films that Marina created from her other live performance art exhibits. We stood and watched in horror as she carved a six inch star into her abdomen with a razor blade. (I mean, not for anything, but most people who cut themselves with a razor blade wind up on a psych unit). Another film being displayed was of women dancing outside in the pouring rain with long skirts on. They were naked underneath their gauzy attire and would periodically lift their skirts high in the air as they danced and twirled and showed all, ostensibly to ward off the rain. This is good to know in case heavy rains are predicted. I could cavort naked in my backyard and possibly thwarted that torrential downpour! (But in the community we live in now, I’d probably need a variance!)

There was a girl, also naked (yes…naked seemed to be the theme throughout. I think Marina has a few Freudian issues…) suspended on a white wall…sitting on a bicycle seat. She had a gorgeous body, but I was concerned that the blood that was pooling in her lower extremities from sitting there for so long could cause a blood clot. (Always the nurse!)

It was quite a show. I didn’t get it at all.

I wonder how they went about finding the people to pose naked for this performance art. Did they advertise in the New York Times employment opportunity section? All the women were pretty buxom, so I guess the ad read “34A’s NEED NOT APPLY”. (I won’t go into what the ad might have suggested for the males.)