Jay-Z and Marina Abramovic

Last summer, Jay-Z performed at Pace Gallery in New York.  The performance is inspired by Marina Abramovic's The Artist is Present.   Like Abramovic's performance, Jay-Z has his viewer come and experience his artistry, rapping one on one.  The six hour marathon of rapping is distilled down to his music video Picasso Baby from his most recent record album Magna Carta Holy Grail. 

Jay-Z creates a parallel with rap and hip-hop with art and art fame.  The two are "cousins" both starting from humble beginnings of the street and the real.  But "when art started becoming part of the gallery, there became was a separation between culture."  Jay-Z believes the similar has happened in hip-hop.  There is a sense that once a rap performer reaches a level of fame, that those artist are "too bourgeois."  This one on one attention he gives each viewer  is akin to the one on one that Abramovic give to her viewer in The Artist is Present.  An intimate exchange of energy, a reminder of the real and the need to "bring the worlds back together."  Curator, art critic and supporter of performance art Roselee Goldberg told the New Yorker "both performances, Marina's and Jay-Z's, encourage you to look somebody in the eye, which we don't do enough, and it's daring to do that.“

The list of viewers that come to participate in Jay-Z's performance includes writer Judd Apatow, designer Cynthia Rowley, actor Alan Cumming, artists Marcel Dzama, hip-hop artists Fab Five Freddy, art dealer Sandra Gering and of course Marina Abramovic herself who speaks at the end about her experience with Jay-Z and his performance.