REVIEW: Marina Abramovic – Walk Through Walls: A Memoir

About Marina Abramovic and her book

Marina Abramovic is a performance artist, known for pushing her limits with her body by pain and stillness.

I’ve known her artwork for a while now and, although I am not a big fan of this kind of art, I always appreciated the fact that she explored other ways of expressing the emotions. By pushing her limits she also pushed the boundaries of art, and for that I appreciate her very much.

When her book, titled Walk Through Walls: A Memoir, was released (25th October 2016), I was keen to read it. I bought it from Amazon for about 20$. It is not cheap, but not expensive either. It has 370 pages, but it is easy to read, the text is not condensed and it has tons of photos (both colored and black and white).I read it in 3 days.

What I liked

It offers the perfect chronology of all her performances, usually accompanied by a photo or two, where they took place and the whole artistic AND personal context. This info is very useful especially for art students, teachers, historians and just art lovers, I guess.

I also liked the fact that it seems to be a true confession. It sounds sincere. I think Marina Abramovic really opened up for this book and just went ahead and told all her stories. Her personality transpires through the written words of this book.

What I didn’t like

Since Marina is not a native English speaker, Walk Through Walls: A Memoir is supposed to having been written with the help of an american novelist, James Kaplan, whose name appears on the title page, next to Abramovic’s (I’ve never heard of him before). The problem is that reading the book you can actually feel that it is written by not a native English speaker. Before reading the book, I kind of got accustomed with her topic and word choice because I used to watch some interviews with her. Now, while reading the book, I expected to read a real english book, but no, there was still the voice of Marina, the non-native English speaker. So, I may ask, where’s the work of James Kaplan in all this business? Maybe it’s not his fault, maybe Marina wanted this way… well, I don’t know. I would have preferred though to read a real english book.

Some sidenotes

Marina states several times in this book that she used to talk with entities. I don’t know what to believe, but I think it is funny to get this kind of info from this kind of book.

She hasn’t understood that neither Ulay, nor her mother, loved her. Nope, not a single moment. Ulay is the kind of man always preoccupied with himself, he would never love another person, especially Marina. She was too old and too big and masculine for him. He is the type of man looking for younger girls, petite girls. She was his mommy. That’s awful. She wasted her life with him. Also, her mother didn’t love her either. I don’t understand why she continue to talk to her. I am sure that in her heart she always hoped that one day her mother would act like a real mother. Imagine the disappointment!

After reading the book, I also saw the movie Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present (2012). It is not very interesting, the book offers far more information about her life and art, but it is enjoyable and, once again, it shows how unsuitable Ulay is for her.