MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ TURNED HERSELF INTO ART AND WASN'T SORRY.

A portrait of a particularly venturesome performance artist.

In the latest of his “…Wasn’t Sorry” artist profiles, Gilberti assumes first person to explore early experiences and people who shaped Marina Abramović’s very personal approach, from her loving grandmother to an unconventional art teacher who threw paint onto a canvas and then set fire to it. The author/illustrator then describes how his subject went from painting flowers, dreams, and clouds to creating edgier artworks—for example, scrubbing a mountain of bones to express her response to the war in her native Yugoslavia and using her body to stand naked while facing her longtime collaborator Ulay in a gallery doorway so that visitors had to “squeeze between us” to enter. So matter-of-fact is the tone that the works all come off not as bids to be outrageous or sensational, but as natural reflections of a creative impulse; not only will young artists with unconventional visions of their own feel validated, but audiences of all sorts should come away with expanded perspectives on what art can be. In the minimalist but moving illustrations, pop-eyed figures with sticklike limbs, clad (when clothed) in solid black or, at times, red and white as the page beneath, stand or sit in stylized poses against unfilled backgrounds. Possibly the most effective image of all is a closing photo of the artist during her 2010 The Artist Is Present performance at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, locking eyes with an equally intense young child.

Revelatory and perceptive.