Unless documented with a camera, performance art is a challenge to capture. While it has been the mission of such organizations as Franklin Furnace to record and champion a place in art history for performance art, what’s the take away? How can the viewer have a piece of Marina Abramović’s 1975 performance Lips of Thomas?? (Imagine that!)
Through a partnership with Bernardaud, Marina Abramović has claimed motifs to represent aspects of her life and career. There are two sets of four pieces each, with the “performances” entitled “A Lonely Dinner for One” and “Misfits for the Table” (for two), (an easy reference to her MoMA performance The Artist Is Present). Abramović is calling out the act of serving and eating as performance, as her intention was to make dinnerware that helps us savor and ritualize our meals (and this may call to mind Rirkrit Tiravanija or Alison Knowles).
Here, memorialized for discussion at your next soiree, Golden Lips (2009) and the red star, a reference to Lips of Thomas (and to her childhood in Communist Yugoslavia). Her curiosity about the universe and a “family crest” (a wolf chewing a lamb while a crow looks on) round out the sets, Set A with a Sun and red star, Set B with a Moon and white star. Available in a limited edition of 2000 exclusively at MoMA.
The entire Bernardaud collection is on sale at the MOMA Design Store – $550 for a set of four.
Image courtesy of: Observer
This particular plate is Ms. Abramović’s own golfleafed lips from a 2009/1975 performance… sure to spark some interesting dinnertime conversation!
Image courtesy of: W Magazine
The silver moon upon the porcelain plate.
Image courtesy of: Buro 247