The Museum of Modern Love

Rose, Heather. The Museum of Modern Love. Chapel Hill: Algonquin 2018. Print

First Sentences:

He was not my first musician, Arky Levin.

Nor my least successful. Mostly by his age potential is squandered or realized. But this is not a story of potential. It is a story of convergence....It is something that, once set in motion, will have an unknown effect. 

Description:

I know virtually nothing about performance art and artists, but that ignorance on my part is taken care of by Heather Rose in her newest novel, The Museum of Modern Love.

Based on an actual MoMA performance by the artist Marina Abramovic in 2010, author Rose imagines the minds and relationships of individuals experiencing a performance art piece. In the Abramovic performance, she sits along at a large table with an empty chair across from her. The public is invited to, one at a time, silently sit across from her and stare into her eyes for as long as they desire, then make way for the next person. Abromovic returns their look without a change in her expression, barely blinking, never talking. 

In the novel, Arky Levin, a composer undergoing an unexpected separation from his wife, stumbles into the Abramovic MoMO exhibit and is transfixed. He returns daily, studying the artist and the people who observe her in the art piece. Gradually, he even meets a few of them and we learn their stories, as well as the background of the artist. What Arky and the other public viewers experience tries to explain the goals and power of this style of art and its effect on their own lives and minds.

Pain is the stone that art sharpens itself on time after time.

Of course, there is the question of whether Arky or his new acquaintances will ever have the strength to sit down at the table across from Abramovic. If they do, what will they experience? They all have observed people leave their time at the table with Abramovic in tears, visibly shaken, although nothing has happened that anyone can see. Theories from the viewers abound about the artist herself: How can she sit so still without any reaction? How does she eat or control bodily functions during the hours sitting at the table? Why is she doing this piece? What does she hope to accomplish in this performance and with her other pieces (such as her months-long walk over half the length of the Great Wall of China just to meet her partner and break up with him)?

As I write this, it sounds like a very slow, uninteresting novel. But actually it is an oddly compelling narrative and insight into the minds and relationships of ordinary people, and how they (and the artist) react to a performance art piece over 70 days. Author Rose provides discussions about art, artists, and personal lives that show this static art performance to be full of life, expectation, goals, disappointments, and change. As a bonus, this book also offers the most interesting description I have ever read: a stream-of-consciousness narration from a person in a coma regarding what it feels like to be so attached and unattached to the world. 

I really enjoyed this off-beat novel for its quietly defined characters and their struggles with relationships and loneliness. Through their stories, I also was able to learn something about the purpose and power of performance art.

Even after all this time, the sun never says, "You owe me." Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole world. 

Happy reading. 

Fred

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Carey, Edward. Observatory Mansions.   

Another oddball book about a performance artist, this one who acts as a living statue and poses in public areas with people who want to take their photo with him. He also steals inconsequential, yet personally important items from people for his museum in the basement of his ancient home which also houses a variety of equally odd characters.