Teaming Up with Ulay and Marina Abramovic
The next book I'm working on will be co-authored by the late Ulay and the great Marina Abramovic--all about the famous 1976 "Berlin lifting," when Ulay stole a painting as an artistic action
I’m delighted to announce here for the first time my next book project, which will be co-written by me, Marina Abramovic and, posthumously based on recorded interviews, Ulay.
If you’ve studied modern art at all you’ll have heard of Marina and Ulay. Marina is probably the world’s most famous living artist (it’s a close tie between her and Damien Hirst I’d guess). Her performance and body art with Ulay is taught in Art History 101 classes. I had the good fortune of knowing Ulay in his final decade. He married a Slovenian woman (as I did) and lived in Ljubljana. We spent many afternoons in his apartment chatting and I helped break some news in a Guardian article—ironically about his lawsuit against Marina over citing authorship of some of their joint works. It turned out that Marina was not put off by this and she and I became friendly correspondents—she wrote the Afterword for my book, Brushed Aside: The Untold Story of Women in Art. She and I met not long ago in Ljubljana.
And here’s a photo of me with Ulay (and Slovenia’s most famous musician, Vlado Kreslin), from a million years ago.
The book we’re working on is in conjunction with The Ulay Foundation and will be published by Bloomsbury as part of the ARCA Art Crime book series I’m editing for the publisher.
The book is a monograph about Irritation: There’s a Criminal Touch to Art (1976), probably Ulay’s most famous work. It will be divided into three sections: Ulay’s own words about the event in total detail, Marina’s recollections of the event, and my analysis of it as an art historian. To read an early insider account I published in The Observer, click below.
A New Feature in the Financial Times
An article of mine just ran in the FT, entitled “Why the Art Trade Should Learn to Love Forensics.” You need a subscription to read it, but a few weeks after it comes out I’ll publish here, just for you, the early “director’s cut” version of it. If you subscribe, you can read it by clicking the button.
Sign Up for My Next Online Lectures
My next online Yale course is sold out, but you can still sign up for one of my next three one-off lectures for The Smithsonian.
March 27 : AI and Art Authentication: The Future of Forensics
April 10: The Caravaggio Case: An Art History Whodunnit
May 29: The Complete(ish) History of Sculpture in One Lecture
You’re most welcome at any and all of them!
Best wishes and more next month.
-Noah