A.O. Scott’s review of the new documentary Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present just went live over at The New York Times. He liked it!
“Like many other recent documentaries about artists, it is more celebratory than analytical, a kind of slick, extended promotional video for its subject,” he writes, though as that kind of movie it has strong access. Moreover, he writes, it further legitimizes and spreads wide the goals of performance art, which is never a bad thing.
Even the eponymous retrospective is presented well, though, as the review concludes, “The film’s message can be summed up in a familiar phrase: You had to be there.”
