Zany performance artist calls Gaga 'genius'

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Lady Gaga has a fan in artist Marina Abramovic, who calls the pop star a 'true original.'

Lady Gaga should feel flattered.

Marina Abramovic knows all about suffering for your art, and she's impressed with the pop star's prowess.
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We caught up with the so-called Grandmother of Performance Art at a preview of the Manchester International Festival on Wednesday.

"I really appreciate her," said Abramovic, 65, who has put herself in extreme danger for her art. At the culmination of a 1974 performance called "Rhythm 5," for instance, she leapt inside the flaming frame of a wooden star, and unexpectedly lost consciousness because the fire had depleted the oxygen at its center. The audience saved her life.

Abramovic's envelope-pushing work was celebrated at a Museum of Modern Art retrospective called "The Artist Is Present" that Gaga saw last year, and at the Manchester Festival preview, the Belgrade-born Abramovic recalled Gaga "did an interview" about what she'd seen, and "she really expressed what she loved about it.

"You never see this from any of these [other] pop artists,? Abramovic said at the Park Avenue Armory.

Gaga's meat dress and her Grammys egg entrance are kids' stuff compared to the time Abramovic lay passively next to a table of pleasure- and harm-inducing objects ? such as a pistol and single bullet ? and allowed the crowd to have its way with her. But the performance artist observed that Gaga endures a certain amount of self-induced torture, too.

"These costumes" she creates "are not easy to walk in," Abramovic said appreciatively. "Ask somebody else to walk in these shoes with the heels in the front and there's nothing in the back, hopping around."
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When we asked Abramovic if she thought Gaga was more original than Michael Jackson or Madonna, she responded that though she considered each a "genius," Gaga is "more extreme" and a "true original" akin to the flamboyant candelabra-and-fur-loving persona that Liberace developed after World War II.

While we're on the subject, Abramovic's Manchester Festival piece is called "The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic," and the sexagenarian said she's already planned her actual funeral.

"There will be three bodies: one real and two fake," she explained. "They will be buried simultaneously" in three cities "in which I lived the longest: Belgrade, Amsterdam and New York. It will be a happy party with jokes; no one has to wear black like I do now. It will be happy colors like lemon, pink, yellow, green." She added that she also wants Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons "to do his own version" of "My Way."

We wouldn't have pegged Abramovic for a Sinatra fan.

Contact Gatecrasher:
Frank DiGiacomo: fdigiacomo@nydailynews.com
Carson Griffith: cgriffith@nydailynews.com
Molly Fischer: mfischer@nydailynews.com

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