“NOTHING” (May 29, 2014)
“Nothing” is in the news. Marina Abramović, a Serbian performance artist of world renown, is about to have a performance by that name at London’s Serpentine Gallery. But a number of curators and art historians are now arguing that her performance fails to acknowledge another artist’s work. “Nothing” is a project that Mary Ellen Carroll, a New York conceptual artist, has been working on ever since the Nineties. She has performed together with Abramović at the Smart Museum in Chicago in 2012. The concerned curators and art historians fear that Carroll’s work will be overshadowed by the Serpentine performance. It will be Ambramović’s first since 2010, when she had a landmark retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In short, the art world is facing a tough problem. The best I can recommend under the circumstances is that all artists embark on the very same project. “Nothing” is not reserved only for performance and conceptual artists, it goes without saying. It is relevant for painters and sculptors, too. Video artists should not be excluded, either. In fact, every artist is invited to partake in “Nothing,” the greatest art show ever. Let it rip!