Don't Touch the Nude Art - It's Alive

(AP)  A new exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art is causing discomfort among some visitors by bringing them close to nude performers - some might say too close.

Two nude performers stand inches apart in a narrow doorway of the exhibit of work by Yugoslavian-born artist Marina Abramovic, which opened on Sunday.

The position of the naked pair, who alternate and are either opposite or same-sex performers, forces patrons to decide whether to walk between them.

To some patrons, a brush with live flesh was just too much to ponder.

Morgan Wolfe, an 18-year-old visitor to the museum, decided not to walk between two male performers.

"It bothers me a bit," he told the New York Post in Sunday editions.

The exhibit, "Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present," presents a view of Abramovic's career over four decades and her work in a variety of mediums, including performance art, installations, sound pieces, video works and photographs.

Besides the naked pair in the doorway, the exhibit includes a nude performer lying under a skeleton and a naked woman on a bicycle seat.

Abramovic is best known for performance works in which she exposed herself to physical pain, sometimes involving audience participation.

In one of her most squirm-inducing works, she invited members of the audience to inflict pain on her with one of 72 objects, including a rose, a chain, scissors, knives, a whip and a gun.

The exhibit at the MoMA continues through May 31.

[sarababe5564]

Get a whole nude attitude!
Nude is normal
Like your body? Show it!
Who says there's anything wrong with skin?
Skinful isn't sinful
Turn life skin-side out - go naked
It's time to turn your life skin-side out
naturistspace . org

[proudmilvet]

Please don't tell me that Children are allowed into this exhibit.

[myopinion57]

I think it's pretty cool. I wouldn't have a problem squeezing between 'live art' of either sex, or both sexes. If they can overcome their inhibitions, so can I. When I traveled in Germany in the '70's and '80's, some hotels had bathing-suit-optional pools, jacuzzis, and saunas (dunno if they still do). So I figured "When in Rome...." and used the facilities in the nude. No problems, no 'staring', no recriminations, no discomforts -- just natural folks. Sometimes we get too doggone moral (thinking nudity = sex), and too full of ourselves to realize that plain and simple nudity with strangers, once done, is easy to feel comfortable about.

[taxchurches]

This is more of the goofy non-definition of "art." OK, I can play that game, too.

Myself, I got up this morning, went to the bathroom and took an "art." Hardly surprising. Dinner last night didn't agree with me, and on the way home from the restaurant I had to pull over and "art" by the side of the road.

[TVO1CITW]

People of art and music rotate on a different axis. Most are influenced by the politic and society of their day and are not art or music. Art and music that crosses generations for 1000's of years is the true craft of the trade.

[Scimajor]

You have to love the picture. Gee, what is the lady passing between the two people looking at?

Having nude models as art .... I'm ok with that. Putting them in a narrow hallway so people passing through the hallway have to brush past them ..... that's just an obnoxious way of getting publicity.

[jackfluffy]

Agreed

[1notrub11]

Yep, in the narrow hallway format, it doesn't resemble anything I would consider art.