Royal Academy, London
Knives, arrows, guns, nakedness… the performance art pioneer’s blockbuster 50-year retrospective underlines her bravery, yet sells it short with off-key re-enactments by stand-ins
Will you make it through the door of the Royal Academy, where two young people currently face each other, naked, like a pair of human gateposts? Not if you are too tactful (or too portly), afraid of grazing their bare bodies with a sharp buckle or zip. But there is a secret bypass into the next gallery that allows you to watch footage of the original and more startling performance of this artwork, in any case, and avoid the keyed-up RA queues.
Imponderabilia was first staged in 1977 by the Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović (born 1946) and her German partner Ulay. A television monitor shows mortified visitors in overcoats pushing rapidly between the eye-to-eye artists. What’s lost today is not just the potential for shock or social embarrassment but the intense emotional connection between Abramović and Ulay. The stand-ins hired for this lavish retrospective resemble, by contrast, detached and slightly fragile models.
