Lady Gaga's Nude-Video Collaborator: Who is Marina Abramovic?

Like Andy Warhol to a previous generation of rock and pop
acts, performance artist Marina Abramović has become a
muse to some of today's biggest stars.From her appearance
in the new Jay Z video for "Picasso Baby" to a just-dropped
provocative clip from Lady Gaga, Abramović has become a
muse and touchstone for a whole new generation.But who is
Abramović and why are Jay and Mother Monster hyping her to
their fans?Abramović was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in
1946 and began her career in the early 1970s as a painter,
visual, text and sound artist as well as one of the pioneers of
the performance art movement. Along with fellow performance
artists Vito Acconci, Chris Burden and Bruce Nauman,
Abramović helped explode the boundaries of fine art with
conceptual performances and happenings that often involved
her testing the limits of her endurance and pain threshold. See
how to reach Lady Gaga's Naked Crystal Zen In Just 7 Easy
Steps! Like Burden, who once crucified himself on a
Volkswagen Beetle in a piece called "Trans-fixed," Abramović
was not afraid to put herself in harm's way for such pieces as
1973's "Rhythm 10," during which she played a kind of
Russian roulette with a series of knives, cutting herself
multiple times in the process, which she then repeated. In
"Rhythm 5" from 1974, she lay at the center of a burning 5-
point star until she lost consciousness.But perhaps her best
known work is 2010's "The Artist is Present," a grueling
performance during which Abramović sat silently for 736
hours in a gallery at New York's Museum of Modern Art
staring at a group of "sitters" who lined up for the privilege of
being part of the piece. In a 2011 documentary about the
performance that traced her career and the heavy physical toll
the performance took on the then-63 year old artist,
Abramović is seen meticulously preparing for the piece and
fretting over the endurance needed for the longest
performance of her career.
As one of the last of her generation of performance artists still
creating new works, Abramović continues to focus on art that
ritualizes everyday actions like standing, sitting, dreaming and
lying down in an effort to provoke a higher state of
consciousness for herself and her audience.Among the more
than 750,000 visitors who came to the MOMA over the course
of "The Artist is Present" (which ran from March 14-May 31,
2010), were Bjö, Rufus Wainwright, Lou Reed, Sharon Stone,
James Franco and Gaga, who is slated to take the stage on
August 25 at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards .The new
Gaga video is, in fact, part of a promotion for Abramović's
Kickstarter campaign for her Marina Abramović Institute ,
which will focus on the study, preservation and presentation
of long duration music, dance, theater, film and performance
art pieces.