Marina Abramović valuation
Sat silently at a table in MoMA for three months and let strangers sit opposite her.
Marina Abramović was born in Belgrade in 1946 and has spent a career testing what a body will tolerate in front of an audience. The early work is the most severe — Rhythm 0 in 1974 left her passive with seventy objects and an invited public — and the long collaboration and relationship with Ulay produced a body of joint work that ended with the two of them walking the Great Wall of China from opposite ends. The Artist Is Present at MoMA in 2010, three months seated opposite whoever sat down, is the piece that made her famous well beyond the art world.
The difficulty for a market is that the primary work is performance, which cannot be owned. What is traded is the residue: photographs of performances, video editions, objects and relics used in the work, and a body of editioned prints. Each behaves differently, and the question of what a given photograph is — a vintage exhibition print, a later edition, one of a series, signed or estate-stamped — governs the value entirely. Documentation from the gallery or the artist's studio is essential and should never be separated from the work.
What a work by Marina Abramović is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the UK.
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Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.