''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 Swann is a film composer in New York separated from his wife, who has made him promise to keep a terrible secret. One day he finds his way to The Atrium at MOMA and sees Marina Abramovic in her performance The Artist is Present. The performance continues for seventy-five days and, as it unfolds, so does Arky as he considers marriage, art and the nature of commitment and love over a long-term union. The Museum of Modern Love is the story of one of the world's greatest art events and a man in search of connection.' (Publication summary)
'Adapted from the Stella Prize-winning novel by Heather Rose, The Museum of Modern Love follows New York-based film composer, Arky Levin, a man struggling to live and work in the face of incredible loss.
'By chance, Arky finds his way to MoMA and sees Marina Abramović in The Artist is Present—a marathon and now-legendary feat of performance art that saw Abramović sitting silent and completely still opposite thousands of museum visitors in the spring of 2010.
'Arky returns to MoMA again and again, and encounters other viewers also drawn to the exhibit, each with their own reasons for spending hours in the presence of Abramović. As the performance unfolds, so does Arky, and with his life coming back into focus, he finally understands what he must do to move forward.
'Set against the backdrop of one of the greatest art events in modern history, and blurring the lines between spectator and artist, this transfixing new work explores dying and living, courage and commitment—and meditates on the power of art to unite and connect us, even in an increasingly disconnected world.'
Source: Seymour Centre.
(Publication abstract)
'This Stella Prize-winning novel from Helen Rose is a masterpiece of introspection. Passages linger in the mind; her evocative prose demands that we stop and ask What would I do?' (Introduction)
The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose : Notes
Melbourne
:
CAE Book Group
,
2018
13925106
2018
single work
criticism
'E.B. White once said there were three New Yorks, comprised of those who were born there (‘solidity and continuity’), the daily commuter (‘tidal restlessness’), and the searcher on a quest, the latter giving the city its passion and dedication to the arts. In The Museum of Modern Love, this third type is drawn to Marina Abramovíc’s The Artist is Present, a simple yet profound performance stretching over seventy-five unrelenting days, in which Marina unflinchingly meets the gaze of a series of individuals in a gallery.'
(Introduction)
'There are certain books that have the knack of getting under your skin. This is why George Bernard Shaw declared Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit to be a far more “seditious” text than Karl Marx’s Das Capital.
'What he was getting at is the power of books to work on your emotions. The intellect can be too cold an instrument to engender empathy, to bring people who are distant from you into your “circle of concern”. And it is precisely this, as philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues, that matters for the pursuit of social justice.
'In 2017, the Stella Prize judges have again come up with a shortlist of books that will engage your brain, but also your heart. They illuminate all the aspects of life that make us frail and vulnerable – sickness, dying, inequality – realities that many of us would prefer to ignore.' (Introduction)
The Museum of Modern Love also won the People's Choice Award in this category.
