In 2010, the performance artist Marina Abramovi? sat in the atrium of MOMA and invited strangers to sit across from her. Watching some attendees weep and Abramovi? cry in response in the documentary, Marina Abramovi?: The Artist is Present, Francine Prose was struck by the connection between art and the divine:
Is what these art-lovers are seeking so different from what the pilgrims hoped to discover when they journeyed into the desert to distract St. Simon Stylites and St. Anthony from their meditations? Is it any wonder that so many sought a few minutes of transcendence by staring into the eyes of an artist whose sole mission, during those months, was to register their presence, to sit there, and look back?
The faithful who came to meditate on a fresco of Giotto’s or a painting by Caravaggio sought a personal experience of the divine, the feeling that they themselves were present, witnessing the mystery being represented, a miracle that was being enacted specially for them. At the MoMA show, the artist’s presence offered transcendence through communion and intimacy, in the privacy that Abramovi? was able to create in a crowded atrium. Watching the documentary, I thought: This is the moment in which we live. Alienated, unmoored, we seek our salvation, one by one, from the artist who brings us the comforting news: I see you. I weep when you weep. The mystery, and the miracle, is that you exist.
The Dish covered the exhibit and posted a photograph of a crier back in 2010.
