Marina Abramovic - (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The famous artist in her own words and at her most revealing: a glimpse into Abramovic's inner world with personal stories and insightful musings paired with original drawings made especially for the book.

Although long esteemed within the art world, Abramovic became a global cultural figure after her groundbreaking 2010 MoMA retrospective, The Artist Is Present. This volume, timed to celebrate her eightieth birthday in 2026--which will be marked by major events, including a large-scale project at the Park Avenue Armory--offers a fresh, personal encounter with the artist. Rather than a traditional monograph, it serves as a poetic map of her extraordinary life, tracing her mystical, daring, and often humorous journey through stories of love (with an entire section devoted to "love spells" and her dreams), sex, loss, fear, nature, ancestry, and creativity.
The volume is part sketchbook, part diary, part personal philosophy. Abramovic's voice remains direct and unfiltered, reflecting the spirit that has defined her five-decade career. Her reflections reveal the emotional and psychological terrain behind the boundary-pushing works that have reshaped the possibilities of art.

Review Quotes

"Timed to coincide with Abramovic's 80th birthday, this monograph pairs personal stories and musings on love, fear, nature, and other subjects with original drawings." -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"Later this year, the seminal performance artist Marina Abramovic turns 80 with a Park Avenue Armory takeover presenting her largest-scale work to date. In anticipation, she's inviting us into some of the most intimate, strange, and mystical moments of her adventurous life. Long Life, Short Stories is a collection of snapshots--from the story of how she lost her virginity to the time she cut garlic with John Cage, and what it felt like to get kicked out of the Venice Biennale in '95. The monograph is full of rich, humorous and diary-style details, along with sketches and striking images of the artist at work." -- W MAGAZINE

About the Author

Marina Abramovic is a Serbia-born conceptual and performance artist whose work examines the body, endurance, the relationship between performer and audience, and the transformative potential of the mind. Often described as the "grandmother of performance art," she has been active for more than forty years. In 2007, she founded the Marina Abramovic Institute (MAI), a nonprofit foundation dedicated to the study and preservation of long-duration performance.