On
Wednesday, 10 July 2013, Jay Z performed “Picasso Baby” from his album Magna
Carta Holy Grail for six straight hours at Pace Gallery in Chelsea,
interacting with the invitation-only audience made up of many of the
art-world’s elite, including performance artist Marina Abramovic. Many agree
that Jay Z’s performance draws inspiration from Abramovic’s MoMA show “The
Artist is Present,” and Jay Z himself acknowledged her influence.
The
performance was filmed and edited into a docu-music-video, titled “Picasso
Baby: A Performance Art Film,” which was released on 2 August 2013. In that
video, Jay Z explains:
Concerts are pretty much performance art with the venues
changed. And just by nature of the venues the performance changes, right?
You’re in a smaller venue it’s a bit more intimate, so you get to feel the
energy of the people. In a concert, especially a large concert, all that energy
comes to you. Like, what do you do with that energy? You know so today, it’s
kind of an exchange. We have some way to drop it back off, you know. When art
started becoming part of the galleries, what became a separation between
culture, and even in hip hop people were like, almost like, art is too
bourgeois. We’re artists, we’re alike, we’re cousins. That’s what’s really
exciting for me, bringing the worlds back together.
We were
immediately drawn to the performance’s “stigmata effect.” That is, the artist
doesn’t just perform for the audience; the audience (made up of critics,
fans, other artists, children) becomes an equal and necessary part of the
performance. “Picasso Baby” takes place not just in or through the body of Jay
Z, but also through the bodies of the people at that event. Everyone becomes
“Picasso Baby.” As the “Manifesto of Little Monsters” positions Gaga as the
“devoted jester” to her kingly and queenly fans, renders Gaga the mirror that
reflects – and therefore embodies – her fans, so Jay Z’s performance changes
depending upon who comes before him: sometimes he watches the audience sing or
dance, sometimes they mess him up, and they always impact his movements, his
engagement, his spectacle. We’re tempted to ask: who’s interpreting whom? Who’s
viewing whom? Who’s influencing whom? Who’s the artist and who’s the audience?
But these are questions that no longer make sense during the “stigmata effect.”
As Gaga would say, “There is no chicken or egg.”
We
guess we could ask: are we part of the performance? Do we experience the
“stigmata effect”? Or is that performance bounded by a specific place (Pace
Gallery, Chelsea) and time (6 hours; 10 July 2013), and we’re merely
spectators, not participants in the spectacle?
We
think interpretation wounds the performance once again, lets its blood to let
us in, allows us to become “Picasso Baby.”
In
this spirit, we invited some of our favorite writers to contribute to a
roundtable discussion of the performance, to build a conversation that is a
stigmata of “Picasso Baby” at Pace Gallery.
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Kate Durbin & Meghan Vicks + +
