You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Laurence King has seized the definitive illustrated biography of Marina Abramović by the performance artist and author Katya Tylevich. Managing editor Laurence King acquired world rights from Rory Scarfe at The Blair Partnership. The current editor is senior editor Laura Paton.
The book will be published on 21st September in the UK and export to coincide with the opening of Abramović’s Royal Academy exhibition, the first major show by a female artist in the academy’s 250-year history. Publication in North America will be on 28th November and in Germany 12th October.
Marina Abramović: A Visual Biography combines new interviews and images as well as ephemera from the performance artist’s extensive personal archive. The aim is to create a unique visual landscape of her personal and artistic life.
At nearly 500 pages, and illustrated with more than 700 stills and photographs, the book provides "extensive and candid insight on Abramović’s most important works and significant personal experiences," said the publisher.
Elen Jones, publishing director at Laurence King, said: "[It is] the most ambitious, most intimate, most revealing record of the artist’s life and work to date. It is no understatement to say that this is the art book of the decade."
Abramović has been a pioneering performance artist since her breakthrough in the 1970s. She was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the 1997 Venice Biennale. In 2010, she had her first major US retrospective and simultaneously performed for over 700 hours in The Artist is Present at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Tylevich is the author of Gus Van Sant: The Art of Making Movies (Laurence King Publishing), Art Oracles (Laurence King Publishing) and Success Oracles (Laurence King Publishing) and co-author of My Life as a Work of Art (Orion Publishing).
Abramović said "At this point in my life, it is very important for me to do things that are adventurous, different and exciting. Making this Visual Biography with Katya Tylevich became one of these things. Looking retrospectively into 55 years of my life and work, and all of the books I have made until now, I tend to always choose the same photographs to illustrate my life. I feel the need to radically change this pattern."