Artist Marina Abramovic, dubbed the Queen of Performance Art, is pretty P’d with Jay Z. According to Abramovic, the music mogul didn’t make good on their deal and she feels used.
If Marina Abramovic looks familiar, it’s because she was featured in Jay Z’s “Picasso Baby” video which was shot in New York City’s Pace Gallery. What many don’t know is that the “Picasso Baby” video was an adaptation of Abramovic’s “The Artist is Present (2010)” and she says she allowed Jay to use her work under the condition that he would help fund her institution, and unfortunately he hasn’t.
“I am very pissed by this, since he adapted my work only under one condition: that he would help my institute. Which he didn’t,” Marina Abramovic tells Spike Art Magazine. “The day before, he came to my office and I gave him an entire power point presentation and said: okay, you can help me, because I really need help to build this thing. Then he just completely used me. And that wasn’t fair. This is very different from Lady Gaga, for example, who has done great work for me. Just by having 45 million followers, she brought all these young kids into my public.”
Abramovic says she has learned her lesson though, “In the end it was only a one-way transaction. I will never do it again, that I can say. Never. I was really naive in this kind of world. It was really new to me, and I had no idea that this would happen. It’s so cruel, it’s incredible. I will stay away from it for sure.”
View the “Picasso Baby” and “The Artist Is Present” videos below.
