This month Stella celebrates The Museum of Modern Love, the winner of the 2017 Stella Prize.
Tell us about your relationship with Marina Abramović. Were you lucky enough to witness The Artist is Present in real life?
I was drawn to Marina Abramovic through a black and white photograph I saw at the NGV in Melbourne of Rhythm 0 which Abramovic performed in an art gallery in Naples in 1974.
The gallery note beside the NGV photograph explained that in this performance Abramovic laid 72 items on a table and invited the audience to use them in any way they saw fit. She remained passive in the room for the entire performance over six hours.
The items included a rose, a bottle of olive oil, a loaf of bread, a feather – and also a scalpel, chains, a gun and a bullet. The descriptor went on to say that Abramovic was also well known for another performance. Abramovic and her long-time partner, Ulay, walked from either end of the Great Wall of China to meet in the middle – to end their relationship. I read those words and I thought: ‘That’s a character for a novel.’
For a long time, I worked with a fictional Abramovic in the emerging novel – but when I travelled to New York to see The Artist is Present in 2010, I sat opposite Abramovic as a participant in the performance. I knew, as soon as she lifted her eyes to meet mine in the gaze, that she was too powerful to fictionalise. I also realised that this performance had to be at the heart of the novel. I then asked her long time gallerist, who had agreed to an interview as part of my research trip, if Abramovic might consider being herself in the novel. He agreed to forward my request, and Abramovic, being a woman of extraordinary courage, said yes.
The novel balances real historical figures with fictional characters. What are the challenges of writing a fictional story around a real-life performance?
It is a very delicate process. I was weaving together of fact and fiction, as many novels do. But the real people in this book were very much alive. I sought consent from them. I had been writing the book for five years before I went to New York. I spent three weeks there observing the 75 day performance of The Artist is Present every day, and I sat opposite Abramovic four times. Almost every day, before and after that trip, I viewed the performance in real time via The Museum of Modern Art’s (MOMA’s) webcam. (There were a lot of sleepless nights given the time difference between Hobart and New York!)
I gave Abramovic and her team the opportunity to review drafts and advise me of any concerns over the coming years as I completed the book. Luckily, they didn’t have any. But The Artist is Present became so famous – and beloved. Abramovic became an international sensation, thrust into the mainstream after being an artist for more than 40 years. More than 1500 people sat opposite Abramovic over the 75 days, each spending minutes or hours gazing into her eyes, and she into theirs, in an artwork that was both secular and spiritual in the midst of New York city. More than 850,000 people from all over the world came to observe it. My responsibility as an author to convey this story of an extraordinary artist at the peak of her career was both onerous and an enormous privilege. Most importantly, I didn’t want to let Marina Abramovic down.
This novel is an unusual and remarkable achievement, a meditation on the social, spiritual and artistic importance of seeing and being seen, and listening for voices from the present and past that may or may not be easy to hear.
The narrative voice, especially the mysterious omniscient narrator, is one of the novel’s most unique features. How did you develop that voice, and what role did you see it playing in the story?
Ah yes, the muse. Elusive and subtle – as muses are, in my experience. It felt otherworldly to have her with me. Art is a mysterious process, characters are part of that mystery, and writing a book about art it felt important to try to convey that.
How did you go about your research for this novel?
It began with reading everything I could find on Marina Abramovic – who, at the time, was a respected but not widely-known artist working in that rather obscure field we call performance art. I am eternally grateful to David Walsh at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart for his extensive collection of books on Abramovic. I’ve had a long love of art history – and the work of female artists. Let me say that art history is a huge subject – as is the role women have played in various movements and throughout time across many art mediums. I went back to the few records we have from the1400’s of female painters of significant acclaim and moved forward from there. I also researched writing music for film for one of the main characters. I listened to many scores while writing the book. I researched the history of the Balkan peninsula and the former Yugoslavia where Abramovic was born, and where her parents were both partisans against the Nazis in World War 2. Beyond Abramovic’s life, there was the challenge of bringing the city of New York to life – as if I was a resident. There was also research into architecture by women, art curation, an obscure but fatal medical condition, the history of Malta, the study of medicine… it took eleven years. It became a work of endurance, but Abramovic is an artist of endurance. And as Abramovic herself says: ‘Art takes everything.’
Arky Levin is a fascinating and complex protagonist. What inspired his character, and did he change much throughout your drafting process?
Arky was always Arky. He is paralysed by his wife’s decision. He is terrified of disappearing into anonymity as a composer, overlooked and undervalued. He is largely unable to consider the needs of other people. He loves his wife … but perhaps he loves the sanctuary she has made for him even more. Although he resents her success. He has no idea how to connect with his daughter. It was never certain that Arky would step beyond his all-consuming fear of simply being human. I think we’ve all known a few artists like that.
You have a new novel coming very soon!
Yes. It’s called A Great Act of Love – and it’s out September 30th. It’s historical fiction travelling from the French Revolution to colonial Australia. It’s based on my family history, wine history and early colonial history. And Allen & Unwin have re-released all the novels with new covers – so readers can choose from either the traditional red and white cover of The Museum of Modern Love or the new blue one (both designed by the wonderful Sandy Cull) – as part of the new set.
About the Author
Heather Rose is the bestselling Australian author of nine novels and a memoir. Her work has won the Stella Prize, the Christina Stead Prize, the Margaret Scott Prize, the ABIA Fiction Book of the Year and the Davitt Award. It has twice been longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Awards. Heather is best known for her novels Bruny and The Museum of Modern Love. The Museum of Modern Love has been widely translated and is currently in pre-production as a feature film. It has also been adapted for the stage premiering at Sydney Festival 2022. Heather’s new novel – A Great Act of Love – is a work of historical fiction based on family and colonial history. It will be published on September 30th in Australia and in the UK and the USA in January 2026.
About the Book
She watched as the final hours of The Artist is Present passed by, sitter after sitter in a gaze with the woman across the table. Jane felt she had witnessed a thing of inexplicable beauty among humans who had been drawn to this art and had found the reflection of a great mystery. What are we? How should we live?
If this was a dream, then he wanted to know when it would end. Maybe it would end if he went to see Lydia. But it was the one thing he was not allowed to do.
Arky Levin is a film composer in New York separated from his wife, who has asked him to keep one devastating promise. One day he finds his way to The Atrium at MOMA and sees Marina Abramovic in The Artist is Present. The performance continues for seventy-five days and, as it unfolds, so does Arky. As he watches and meets other people drawn to the exhibit, he slowly starts to understand what might be missing in his life and what he must do.
This dazzlingly original novel asks beguiling questions about the nature of art, life and love and finds a way to answer them.
Judges Report
The Museum of Modern Love is an exceptional novel that reimagines Marina Abramovic’s 2010 performance of The Artist is Present, in which she silently encountered individual members of a larger audience of viewers while seated in the atrium of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The performance itself was an intensely compelling exhibition of the power of silence and vision, and Heather Rose develops a suite of intersecting characters, all visitors to the performance, all subject to their own daily routines, to the possibilities of conversation and restitution, to hope and bereavement, to a need for internal guidance and meaning.
The novel is grounded in the everyday lives of a rich and compelling cast of characters, but it also transmutes the intensity and significance of Abramovic’s work into the medium of literature, where people move, in their thoughts, conversations and memories, between everyday life and art, as the modest confrontation of the artist’s gaze in her performance stimulates each character’s individual confrontation with questions that lie at the heart of their own lives. This novel is an unusual and remarkable achievement, a meditation on the social, spiritual and artistic importance of seeing and being seen, and listening for voices from the present and past that may or may not be easy to hear.
It is rare to encounter a novel with such powerful characterisation, such a deep understanding of the consequences of personal and national history, such affection for a city and the people who are drawn to it, and such dazzling and subtle explorations of the importance of art in everyday life.
Further Reading
Reviews
“From its conception to its last page, the book challenges our perceptions of where life ends and art begins (if they were ever separate to begin with). As readers, we sometimes find ourselves in the atrium, keenly observing from the periphery, or we find ourselves pulled along in the currents of all these connected lives. When the book is at its most powerful, we’re also invited into the centre, asked if we’d like to take a seat and meet the gaze.” Dominic Smith,The Australian
“The Museum of Modern Love is more than just that rare treat, a book that requires something of the reader – it is a book that painstakingly prepares you for its own requirements. In a playful way, this bold new novel by Heather Rose is an astute meditation on art, bravery, friendship, love, how to live, and on dying.” Louise Swinn, Sydney Morning Herald
“It’s true that the subject matter is fascinating in itself but Heather Rose deserves credit for taking the initial inspiration to create her own thoughtful, multi-layered work; deftly grabbing the reader’s attention right from the beginning and sustaining the multiple narrative threads throughout. The theme of connection is predominant and I found the most significant part of the novel to be how the characters respond to the exhibition and whether they are able to take that experience into their own lives (i.e. truly connect art to life).” Amanda Rayner, Readings
Links
Read the full transcript of Heather Rose‘s beautiful acceptance speech upon winning the 2017 Stella Prize or listen on the Stella Podcast
Read Chair of Judges Brenda Walker’s speech announcing Heather as the winner.
Listen to Heather discuss Marina Abramovic and The Museum of Modern Love on Books and Arts
Read a review of Heather’s work to date and her ‘mischievous artistry’ on the Sydney Review of Books
Heather shares her five most cherished artworks on Radio National
Heather’s tips on how to survive as a novelist, on ABC Hobart
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