Walk Through Walls

into very small places. The young couples had to go to the park or the cinema to have sex. And forget about ever trying to buy anything new or nice.

A joke from Communist times: A guy retires, and for having been such an exceptional worker, he is awarded, instead of a watch, a new car, and they tell him at the office he s very lucky ­he ll get his car on such and such a date, in twenty years.

Morning or afternoon? the guy asks.

What do you care? the official asks him.

I have the plumber coming the same day, the guy says.

My family didn t have to endure all this. My parents were war heroes ­they fought against the Nazis with the Yugoslav partisans, Communists led by Tito ­and so after the war they became important members of the Party, with important jobs. My father was appointed to Marshal Tito s elite guard; my mother directed an institute that supervised historic monuments and acquired artwork for public buildings. She was also the director of the Museum of Art and Revolution. Because of this, we had many privileges. We lived in a big apartment in the center of Belgrade ­Makedonska Street, number 32. A large, old-­fashioned 1920s building, with elegant ironwork and glass, like an apartment building in Paris. We had a whole floor, eight rooms for four people ­my parents, my younger brother, and me ­which was unheard of in those days. Four bedrooms, a dining room, a huge salon (our name for the living room), a kitchen, two bathrooms, and a maid s room. The salon had shelves full of books, a black grand piano, and paintings all over the walls. Because my mother was the director of the Museum of the Revolution, she could go to painters studios and buy the

enactment of upending patriarchal norms. Los Angeles Review of Books

Abramovi 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 Abramovi 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 Abramovi 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

Abramovi 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 Abramovi  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 Abramovi 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 Abramovi 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
 
Abramovi 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 Abramovi , there is no difference between art and life, life is a dream while it lasts, an absolute presence made in a vacuum.   Alejandro Jodorowsky