Artist protests modern art by sitting naked on a toilet for two days
To protest what she sees as the growing pretentiousness of modern art, artist Lisa Levy plans to sit naked on a toilet in the middle of the Brooklyn Art Gallery for two days, and you can join her.
"I'm really just trying to have a fun experience," Lisa Levy tells As It Happens host Carol Off. "It's a parody of this work Marina Abramovic did."
Levy is referring to the 2010 MoMA show, "The Artist Is Present", where artist Marina Abramovic sat at a desk in the middle of a gallery. People lined up to sit and join her.
Levy thinks Abramovic's work was pretentious and a symbol of a wider problem, "I feel like even though I love a lot of her [Abramovic] work … that piece of work is kind of a symbol of what has happened to the art world and a lot of creative fields."
Levy says she hopes her protest will start a discussion in the art world. "What I ultimately think is that ego gets in the way of making good art. It's a certain self-consciousness that gets in the way of really communicating with people."
Listen to Marina Abramovic on As It Happens in 2013:
Levy is also inviting people to sit with her, as in Abramovic's work, with one caveat: "I'll be sitting naked on a toilet and there will be a toilet someone else can sit on with me. I'm not even wearing nail polish," she jokes.
"I've gotten so much attention and that's just proving in a certain way, how silly it is, what people get excited about in terms of art," Levy says.
Lisa Levy's "The Artist Is Humbly Present" is at the Brooklyn Art Gallery on Jan. 30 and 31.