The World’s Most Famous Performance Artist Needs to Make Real Money

For nearly three months, Marina Abramovic sat on a wooden chair in New York’s Museum of Modern Art, six days a week, 8 to 10 hours a day, barely moving and never getting up, not even to eat or go to the bathroom. Her shoulders ached, her legs and feet swelled, and her ribs felt as if they were sinking down into her organs. The punishing performance transformed her into an international celebrity and one of the world’s most famous living artists.

More than half a million people came to see the 2010 exhibit, titled The Artist Is Present. In addition to Abramovic herself, the retrospective featured rooms filled with films and photographs documenting works she’d created over four decades. Some 1,500 visitors, including Sharon Stone, Bjork, and Lou Reed, waited in line, and sometimes through the night, to sit across from the artist and bask in her gaze.