In 2013, Jay Z collaborated with performance artist Marina Abramovic, whose 2010 installation The Artist is Present inspired the rap mogul's music video, Picasso Baby: A Performance Art Film.
A few years after the fact, Abramovic made it known that the partnership was a "one-way transaction" and that it didn't quite work out as planned. "I am very pissed by this, since he adapted my work only under one condition: that he would help my institute," she recently told Spike magazine, reports Pitchfork. "Which he didn't."
Marina Abramovic says "cruel" Jay Z "completely used" her for "Picasso Baby" stunt https://t.co/KQITaS6T1t pic.twitter.com/CzotF1lAbu
— Pitchfork (@pitchfork) May 19, 2015
The Serbian artist continued to explain that she and Jay Z had a meeting in which she gave permission to use her work so long as he helped bring attention to her art. "Then he just completely used me," she said. "And that wasn't fair."
In 2013, the rapper met with Abramovic and agreed to an undeclared monetary donation to the Marina Abramovic Institute, notes Fact Magazine. A rep for the artist stated at the time that Jay Z "intends to offer the institute some other form of ongoing support" in a "long-durational collaboration." A Roc Nation representation then confirmed that Jay Z would make a donation but didn't further reveal information. It remains unknown whether or not the Blueprint rapper donated monetary or other means of support.
Abramovic had a very different experience with Lady Gaga as she told Spike. The pop artist appeared nude in an Abramovic film and "Just by having 45 million followers, she brought all these young kids into my public," the artist said.
JAY Z - Picasso Baby: A Performance Art Film from DERTV on Vimeo.
The performance artist vows to never permit her work in such a manner again. "I was really naïve in this kind of world," she said. "It was really new to me, and I had no idea that this would happen. It's so cruel, it's incredible. I will stay away from it for sure."
The Artist Is Present included Abramovic sitting stagnant at an atrium table in New York's Museum of Modern Art for a collected 736 hours, as people took their turns sitting in the chair across from her. Jay Z's Mark Romanek directed music video interpretation persisted for six hours while he continually rapped in June of 2013 in New York City's Pace Gallery. Judd Apatow, Alan Cumming and Michael K. Williams all joined Jay Z in the Picasso Baby clip.
"The truth is, as far as hip-hop and arts, we were like cousins," Jay Z once told Bill Maher. "If you think about those days when Fab Five Freddy was with Madonna and Basquiat and everything. We all went to those clubs; that's when hip-hop was more underground. The arts and hip-hop really partied together. But when art started becoming part of the gallery, it was this separation. But we pretty much came up together."
