Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Marina Abramovich (Yugoslav, b. 1946) sits across from you, looking at you as you look back at her, in the atrium of the MoMA. She is sculptured in a long red dress. You are anyone who wishes to sit at the table for as long as you like. You are acutely aware that the performance piece is being recorded. And you wonder if you should switch that awareness to something else. But what? Marina Abramovich sits across from you. From the outside of "The Artist is Present," you may sit or stand at any point around the square marked out in white tape on the floor. If you look at the two sitters from the side, you are reminded of so many paintings of just that view. Two human beings seated across from each other, not touching and yet everywhere seems to touch. If you look at Marina Abramovich, she becomes the art object. Black hair tied back on beautiful gaunt head. A red triangle. You can imagine you are seated across from her, but you are not. You are outside the square. If you lo...

What drives artists to destroy their chosen medium? Why "compose" noise? Why paint anti-paintings? Sure, old artistic conventions must be destroyed to create new ones. That is the dynamic of original creation. Strong poets "misread" their strong predecessors, is one way of putting it. But some artists seem bent on smashing not just conventions, but the medium itself. They want to strike at the fundamentals. So Ad Reinhard, who created his black paintings in the last decade of his life, wrote, "There is something wrong, irresponsible and mindless about color; something impossible to control. Control and rationality are part of my morality." Michael Scott, whose solo exhibition I saw at the Gering & Lopez Gallery yesterday, was inspired by Reinhard to create his early series of "target" paintings. The series, consisting of black and white concentric circles that appear identical with only slight variations, was intended to remove "judgment...