<![CDATA[The Altar Of Art]]>In 2010, the performance artist Marina Abramovi? sat in the atrium of MOMA and invited strangers to sit across from her. Watching some attendees weep and Abramovi? cry in response in the documentary, Marina Abramovi?: The Artist is Present, Francine Prose was struck by the connection between art and the divine:

Is what these art-lovers are seeking so different from what the pilgrims hoped to discover when they journeyed into the desert to distract St. Simon Stylites and St. Anthony from their meditations? Is it any wonder that so many sought a few minutes of transcendence by staring into the eyes of an artist whose sole mission, during those months, was to register their presence, to sit there, and look back?

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