When I first opened the pages of this book at bedtime, I saw that I had to make a decision. The author explains that the novel is a hybrid of fact and fiction and some of the characters are, by permission, based on real living people. One of these, and central to the story, is performance artist Marina Abramović, but although her name was vaguely familiar I could not remember why. To be honest, although I look at and often enjoy contemporary art, I would be hard pressed to name any living contemporary artist apart from Anish Kapoor (and that’s only because we have dined out on our impressions of his bizarre incomprehensible red wax installations at the Guggenheim in Bilbao). I have only ever once seen any performance art: at the Melbourne Festival some years ago where the audience was invited to ‘visit’ and make conversation with silent and immobile patients decked out in ghostly white. It was quite unnerving, and obviously memorable, but I have no idea whose work it was.
Well, I decided not to explore online to find out about Abramović. I wanted to see whether the book worked for people like me, interested in but not knowledgeable about contemporary art, with a dash of scepticism thrown in for good measure. *chuckle* Would the book work without the aid of Google?
Well, it does, The Museum of Modern Love works for me.
There is a lot to think about in this novel, which explores the nature of art by reference to Abramović’s performance of ‘The Artist is Present’ in New York. This performance involved Abramović sitting immobile and silent in a gallery at MOMA (the Museum of Modern Art) each day for 75 days, while members of the public queued up to sit in silence and gaze into her eyes. They made a movie about this in 2012, and the trailer features Abramović saying that she is most often asked ‘why is this art?’ Heather Rose answers this question by showing how her characters, observing or participating in this performance, project onto Abramović their thoughts, memories, quandaries and so on. It is a different way of thinking about art and what it’s ‘for’.
But The Museum of Modern Love is not just cerebral pondering about the nature of art.
SPOILER (not a very big one since you’ll guess most of this, as I assume you are meant to, before it’s revealed by the author)
There’s a major character called Arky Levin, whose wife Lydia has taken out a restraining order to prevent him visiting her in the last stages of a terminal disease. She has done this because he is a film composer, and she loves him, and she wants to spare him a burden that would curtail his creativity. He loves her too, but in interrogating himself about the pain her decision has cost him, he reveals his disgust about the physical effects of her decline, and his selfish desire to be spared it so that he can do his best work ever. (He thinks he’s at the peak of his career).
I found this very confronting. Most of us like to believe that our loved ones, flawed though they may be, would be there for us if we needed them, and we also like to believe that we, flawed though we may be, would be up to the challenge of providing that support if our loved ones needed it. Lydia has judged Arky beforehand and found him wanting. She has made a unilateral decision (for which their friends have judged him harshly) so that she isn’t distressed by his failure to be there for her. (She has BTW enlisted her daughter’s support, which is an interesting authorial choice, eh?) Rather than put up with him being inadequate and to allow him to continue work which, yes, does demand congenial surroundings rather than a horde of in-house nurses and medical equipment, she has denied him part of the process of coming to terms with impending death and the opportunity to say goodbye. Readers will find themselves unsure if this is generous, or cruel, on Lydia’s part.
But what if Arky is a genius? Abramović makes incredible demands on herself and any relationship she has had. Is creative genius different and does it absolve one from ordinary human obligations? Leaving aside the issue of whether Lydia’s absence and the manner of imposing it would inhibit Arky’s creativity anyway, what would we think about Beethoven or Shakespeare putting their work on hold to nurse a loved one at home for as long as it takes? And is there a gender issue underlying this? Would a man take himself away to die quietly without interfering with his wife’s art?? What kind of relationship underlies this sort of decision?
Anyway, the narrative drive, such as it is in a novel intended to be more of a meditation on life and love, focusses on how Arky is going to behave. Will he eventually go to see Abramović so that the semi-mystic experience of communing with her in this artifice will clarify what he should do? Will he go to see his wife anyway? Will he be too late if he tries? The reader has to buy into the whole premise that Abramović’s art is a sort of spiritual experience in order to sustain belief in the power of the Abramović phenomenon, and I admit to faltering a bit towards the end.
Still, The Museum of Modern Love is a very interesting novel, offering an empathetic view of provocative contemporary art that I haven’t come across before. I enjoyed the insights into the composer’s creative processes, and I liked the way Rose wove her characters together to bring their insights to bear on Arky’s dilemma. All of them are memorable in some way, especially the recently bereaved Jane who spends all of her brief holiday in New York absorbed by Abramović’s performance. What more convincing device could Rose have used to demonstrate just how compelling The Artist is Present may have been for those willing to submit to it!
PS If you’d like to suss out Marina Abramović beforehand, this article by Emma Brockes at The Guardian is an intelligent overview. I don’t recommend the Wikipedia article: much of Abramović’s work sounds a lot like self-harm and it made me feel quite sick to read about it.
Author: Heather Rose
Title: The Museum of Modern Love
Publisher: Allen & Unwin, 2016
Cover design by Sandy Cull
ISBN: 9781760291860
Review copy courtesy of Allen & Unwin.
Available from Fishpond: The Museum of Modern Love
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
I like thinking (and arguing) about ‘what is art’ and I think I might have to read this book. I hope it’s well written! You see performance artists from time to time wandering about festivals but the only one whose name I remember is Stelarc hanging by fishhooks when I’d take the kids into Moomba.
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By: wadholloway on February 10, 2017
at 10:45 am
Yes, I like it too.
I’ve recently started following on Twitter a feed called @sovietvisuals which features Soviet propaganda art and it offers great (and often hilarious) food for thought about the nature and purposes of art. (I did Greek and Roman Art when I was at uni, and I tell you, Goebbels had nothing on the emperor Augustus!)
Did I forget to say the book was well-written? It certainly is!
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By: Lisa Hill on February 10, 2017
at 10:52 am
Not for me….
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By: Guy Savage on February 10, 2017
at 1:31 pm
Awww…
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By: Lisa Hill on February 10, 2017
at 1:39 pm
I’m not queuing up to stare in anyone’s eyes!
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By: Guy Savage on February 10, 2017
at 1:44 pm
Oh, the artist, I thought you meant the book!
No, I wouldn’t either.
When I went to the hospital one (that I mention in the first paragraph) I came away thinking, yes, that’s exactly like the experience of visiting someone in hospital. The awkwardness of it, the largely one-way conversation, and the way the friend is different, because they are (justifiably) self-absorbed in his/her own pain. But I didn’t need performance art to teach me that, I knew it already. So it was basically pointless, I thought.
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By: Lisa Hill on February 10, 2017
at 1:50 pm
I’d queue up to meet Balzac, Zola or Maupassant and probably a few others but that’s about that.
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By: Guy Savage on February 10, 2017
at 1:53 pm
#Introvert I’m more likely to worship from the back of the room…
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By: Lisa Hill on February 10, 2017
at 1:55 pm
I loved Heather Rose’s book about Lord Lucan (she fictionalised his story in a really imaginative way) so I’ve had this one on my radar for a bit. It’s just been longlisted for the Stella, too.
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By: kimbofo on February 10, 2017
at 7:17 pm
This is the first time I’ve come across her writing, and I’m impressed.
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By: Lisa Hill on February 10, 2017
at 10:26 pm
I tried to buy this today in a bookshop for which I have a voucher but no go. In fact, no go on most of the Stella shortlisted books except for the humungous Victoria which I’m sure is interesting but not for me right now.
Anyhow, I haven’t read past your first couple paras but I wanted to say that I’d (I will in fact if I get to this book) do what you did – that is, see if it worked for me. My feeling is that if you have to go and study/research something else in order to understand a book, you’re probably going to fail somewhat because it’s one thing to “know” another artist/writer/musician (whatever the allusion is) from one’s past experience but quite a different thing to cram an understanding in order to read the new thing. Does that make sense? I never like the cramming approach. The book has to work with different levels of knowledge or it’s not really worth reading for me.
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By: whisperinggums on February 11, 2017
at 5:30 pm
Yes, I think you’re right… the tension only arises when you half-know something, and then it teases at you the way it does when you can’t think of a word you want to use, or a name you’ve forgotten.
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By: Lisa Hill on February 11, 2017
at 5:42 pm
Oh yes, that’s a different thing – there it is usually worth refreshing one’s memory I’d agree!
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By: whisperinggums on February 11, 2017
at 6:11 pm
LOL this was not something I experienced when I was younger….
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By: Lisa Hill on February 11, 2017
at 7:15 pm
No indeed – a bit of a shock eh?
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By: whisperinggums on February 11, 2017
at 9:32 pm
Yup…
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By: Lisa Hill on February 11, 2017
at 9:38 pm
I just caught up with kimbofo’s review for this (which led me to yours). I actually saw one of Marina’s video’s about this performance when it went around fb a while back. It was from the first day when, unbeknownst to Marina, her former lover appeared as one of the sitters. It was an incredibly emotional experience for the two of them, all the onlookers and for me, the video viewer.
So I do get how this could be viewed as a spiritual experience, or at least a deeply moving, personal connection that feels profound.
Marina’s face has certainly haunted me since seeing this video, and now that I know the connection to this book, I will have to read it – asap!
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By: Brona on April 20, 2017
at 4:07 pm
Hi Brona, well, I’m certainly going to suss out more of her novels!
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By: Lisa Hill on April 20, 2017
at 6:41 pm
[…] Museum of Modern Love” by Heather Rose, see my review (IMO this is the standout title for the […]
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By: 2017 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards shortlists | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on April 26, 2017
at 4:22 pm
[…] & Unwin). It’s a terrific book here, collecting prizes all over the place. See my review here. […]
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By: 2017 Australian Book Design Awards winners | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on May 29, 2017
at 9:50 pm
[…] The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose, published by Allen & Unwin – I’ve read this one too, see my review. […]
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By: 2017 Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Prize longlists | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on August 14, 2017
at 3:42 pm
[…] Heather Rose The Museum of Modern Love (Allen & Unwin), see my review […]
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By: 2017 Queensland Literary Awards shortlist | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on September 5, 2017
at 4:09 pm
Oh, this is too funny – so much for memory! I’ve drafted and scheduled my post, and came here to get your link as I remembered you’d read it (of course you had!) to find that we started roughly similarly i.e. re not knowing anything about the artist. (Though my first para is different). BUT I’d completely forgotten what I’d said here about doing what you did and reading it blind! Actually, I would have read it blind if my brother hadn’t sent me a link – but you’ll see when the post goes live late tonight!
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By: whisperinggums on September 27, 2017
at 1:43 pm
Ha ha!
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By: Lisa Hill on September 27, 2017
at 5:34 pm
[…] Lisa (ANZLitLovers) also liked the novel. […]
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By: Heather Rose, The museum of modern love (#BookReview) | Whispering Gums on September 27, 2017
at 10:33 pm
[…] Winner: The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose, published by Allen & Unwin, see my review […]
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By: 2017 Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Prizes winners | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on December 4, 2017
at 8:59 pm
[…] Rose has been writing for a while, but she sprang to prominence with her prize-winning novel The Museum of Modern Art (2016). For a while there it was on shortlists everywhere, but I bet it’s winning the 2017 […]
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By: Authors from Tasmania (Australian Authors #2) | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on December 6, 2017
at 10:21 pm
[…] The Museum of Modern Love, by Heather Rose, see my review […]
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By: Aussie and Kiwi authors on the 2018 Dublin Literary Award Longlist | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on December 9, 2017
at 9:34 am
[…] also, other reviews: Lisa at ANZLitLovers (here) Sue at Whispering Gums (here) Kim at Reading Matters (here), The Butterfly Man (here) Kate at […]
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By: The Museum of Modern Love, Heather Rose | theaustralianlegend on December 11, 2017
at 10:29 pm
[…] The Museum of Modern Love (2016) by Heather Rose […]
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By: 2017 ANZLitLovers Australian and New Zealand Best Books of the Year | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on December 30, 2017
at 4:26 pm
[…] Museum of Modern Love” by Heather Rose, see my review (IMO this is the standout title for the […]
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By: 2017 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards winners | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on November 30, 2020
at 1:50 pm
[…] then I read Kim @readingmatters review, which lead me to Lisa @ANZlitlovers and Kate @booksaremyfavouriteandbest and I realised very quickly that I did indeed know who Marina […]
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By: The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose on March 9, 2021
at 10:09 pm