Ulay, the Performance Art Pioneer and Fabled Former Partner of Marina Abramović, Has Died at Age 76

The artist Frank Uwe Laysiepen, better known as Ulay, has died
at age 76 in his adopted home of Lljubljana, Slovenia.

Ulay was a pioneer in performance art, photography, and body
art, who rose to fame during a long collaboration with his ex-art
partner and girlfriend Marina Abramović.

Ulay died on Monday at the University Rehabilitation Institute
in Ljubljana, leaving behind a foundation in Amsterdam and a
recently launched project space in Slovenia. The cause of death has
not been confirmed, though the artist had been in recovery from
lymphatic cancer.

“It takes a long time, perhaps a lifetime, to understand Ulay,”
Abramović once said about about the artist with whom she shared one
of the most famous artistic relationships. After meeting in 1976,
the two embarked on a series of challenging and sometimes
physically extreme performances called “Rela­tions Works.” The
themes often had to do with the boundaries between self and other,
and variously involved Ulay and Abramović screaming in each
others’ faces, braiding their hair together, and sitting still and
staring at each other for as long as they could bear.

In one final, particularly symbolic work, the couple walked from
either side of the Great Wall of China in 1988 and met in the
middle to say goodbye and part ways for good.

“It is with great sadness l learned about my friend and former
partner Ulay’s death today,” Abramović tells Artnet News. “He was
an exceptional artist and human being, who will be deeply missed by
all those who knew him. On a day like this, it is comforting to
know that his art and legacy will live on for a long time to
come.”

Ulay was born in a wartime bunker in the German town of Solingen
in 1943. His father died when Ulay was only 14. A few years later,
in 1969, Ulay packed up and left Germany, later explaining that he
was disturbed by “Germanness” and repelled by the German bourgeois
lifestyle. He planted roots in Amsterdam, where he maintained a
home until his death. Later, when he met his partner, he began to
split his time between Amsterdam and the Slovenian capital
of Ljubljana.

“He will be deeply missed by his family, friends, the art
community, and the thousands of us, who he has so deeply touched
and inspired,” the ULAY Foundation writes on social media. “He
influenced generations of artists and many more to come—his memory
and legacy will live on forever through his work and the work of
the ULAY Foundation.”

As a young artist, Ulay was a pioneer in instant photography and
self-portraiture. From 1970, he worked as a consultant to Polaroid,
which gave him unlimited access to cameras, film, and other
materials. During the subsequent five years, he explored questions
of identity through intimate and up-close images of himself, as
well as of transvestities and transsexuals.

Ulay and Abramović made a memorable reunion in 2011 during
Abramović’s performance at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Abramović had been performing her seated work The Artist is
Present, awaiting visitor after visitor to sit across from her
and look into her eyes. At one point, she looked up and found Ulay
looking back at her. The moment, captured on video, has been
watched 17.3 million times on YouTube.

That sentimental feeling was soon shattered, however, when Ulay
brought a lawsuit against his former partner in 2015, claiming she
had violated a contract regarding their collaborative works. In
conclusion, a Dutch court ordered Abramović to pay Ulay royalties
totaling €250,000 ($280,500). Years later, in an interview timed to
Abramović’s opening at the Louisiana Museum, the former couple said
they had resolved their differences and that their relationship was
again peaceable.

“Ulay was incomparable. The most influential and generous artist
I have ever known, the most gentle, selfless, ethical, elegant,
witty, the most incredible human,” wrote Ulay’s gallerist in New
York, Mitra Korasheh, on Instagram. “He will be deeply missed by
his family, friends, the art community and the thousands of artists
he inspired, but his memory and legacy will live on.”

The post Ulay, the Performance Art Pioneer and Fabled Former
Partner of Marina Abramović, Has Died at Age 76 appeared first
on artnet News.