Marina Abramovic & Ulay Did They Get Back Together
Ulay, Boundary-Pushing Performance Artist, Dies at 76
He made his name during a 12-year creative and romantic partnership with Marina Abramovic.
Image
Ulay, the performance artist whose provocative collaborations with Marina Abramovic often led them to push each other to extremes, died on Monday at his home in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He was 76.
The cause was unknown, a spokeswoman for the Richard Saltoun Gallery, which represented him, said. Ulay had long suffered from cancer of the lymphatic system, she added.
Ulay, whose real name was Frank Uwe Laysiepen, and Ms. Abramovic were also romantic partners, from 1976 to 1988.
The pair's work, while often dangerous, was designed at times to show audiences the intensity of their bond. In "Rest Energy," from 1980, they faced each other, a bow and arrow between them. Ms. Abramovic held the bow while Ulay leaned back, pulling the arrow taut and aiming it at her chest. One slip could have caused Ulay to fire the arrow straight into her.
In "Light/Dark," they slapped each other repeatedly, and in "Breathing In/Breathing Out," they blocked their nostrils with cigarette filters, then locked mouths, sharing each other's breath until they passed out.
In "Nightsea Crossing," the couple sat at a table for seven hours at a stretch, not moving and barely blinking. That work had come about after the couple had spent a year living together in the Australian Outback, Ms. Abramovic told The New York Times in 1986. It was an attempt to bring the spiritual contemplation possible in the desert into a city, she said.
In Ulay's final work with Ms. Abramovic, "The Lovers," each of them walked more than 1,000 miles from different ends of the Great Wall of China until they met. The work had been conceived to culminate in the couple's marriage, but by then they were estranged, and it was used to mark their separation instead.
They did not speak to each other again for some 20 years.
Frank Uwe Laysiepen was born on Nov. 30, 1943, in Solingen, Germany. He trained as a photographer and worked as a consultant for Polaroid. He used Polaroid photography early in his art career, experimenting with depictions of his identity, sometimes by cross-dressing.
Renown came after he had met Ms. Abramovic while living in Amsterdam in 1975. They immediately considered themselves soul mates, even discovering that they shared the same birthday, Ms. Abramovic wrote in "Walk Through Walls" (2016), her autobiography.
Ulay tended to Ms. Abramovic's wounds after she cut a star into her stomach as part of a performance, and soon afterward they decided to work together rather than as individuals, according to "The Story of Marina Abramovic & Ulay," a 2017 film.
After they broke up, Ulay continued making his own work, and returned to using Polaroid cameras.
In 2010, he had a public reunion with Ms. Abramovic when he sat down opposite her and took her outstretched hands during "The Artist Is Present," a marathon performance at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in which she sat in the museum daily and looked into the eyes of individual museumgoers.
A video clip of their meeting, set to sentimental music, has been viewed more than 17 million times on YouTube. "It was a very touching moment," Ulay told The Guardian in 2016.
"I never rehearse performances," he said in the same interview. "It's about spontaneity — no rules, no time limits, no substitution."
His survivors include his wife, Lena, and three children.
In 2015, Ulay sued Ms. Abramovic, claiming that she had failed to give him credit for works and that she had not paid him properly. In 2016, a Dutch court ordered Ms. Abramovic to pay Ulay €250,000 (the equivalent of about $280,000) in royalties as well as costs.
Marina Abramovic & Ulay Did They Get Back Together
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/arts/ulay-dead.html