Marina Abramovic against Jay-Z

In 2013, the world of performance art approached to the music one: the artist Marina Abramović agreed to work with the rapper Jay-Z to an installation that would later become the videoclip of "Picasso Baby".

In short, Jay-Z inspired by the retrospective of Abramović "The Artist is Present" held at MoMA in 2010, sang for six hours "Picasso Baby", interacting with a large and excited public at the Pace Gallery in New York.

The combination between the two realities seemed to be great: the video received a big success and definitively sanctioned the closeness between two worlds which, despite their internal differences, are still united by the creative expression as a maximum.

Marina Abramović inserted though a single clause: she would had helped Jay-Z if he would have helped economically her institute "MAI".

...But the rapper didn't (apparently)

Two years later, Marina confesses to Spike Magazine: "Jay-Z completely used me".

"I will never do it again, that I can say. Never. I was really naive in this kind of world. It was really new to me, and I had no idea that this would happen. It's so cruel, it's incredible. I will stay away from it for sure".

The divorce between hip-hop and performance art is almost upon us.

So it seemed. Or at least, so far.

In reality Jay-Z payed for "MAI" but Marina hasn't been advised of this by her institute. The media have been mobilized and the world shouted to the scandal because of a memo which has not been delivered by mistake to Abramović.

A message of apology was sent by the institute "MAI" to Jay-Z ... and now Marina has only to retire herself in a symbolic silent of meditation: thanks to "The Artist is Present" we all know that, in some cases, silence is worth a thousand words.