The self-proclaimed "grandmother of performance art," Abramovic is known for her work exploring pain and endurance, which she idiotically and dangerously accomplishes by cutting herself during performances.

Born in Serbia with parents who were Partisans during World War II, Abramovic studied fine arts in Zagreb and Belgrade. She began her innovative yet terrifying pieces of performance art in the mid-70s, which included cutting herself repeatedly in Rhythm 10 and leaping across flames in Rhythm 5 (ostensibly to explore the "state of consciousness" as a performer). Throughout the 80s and 90s she performed similar unusual pieces, often collaborating with West German performer Uwe Laysiepen, but she didn't garner wide attention in the United States until 2005 with her Seven Easy Pieces exhibit at the Guggenheim, a seven day survey of her own work and like-minded artists in the 70s. The exhibit, naturally, caught people's attention and in 2010 MoMA held a major retrospective of her work, The Artist is Present. Perhaps having learned her lesson from the daredevil stunts of her youth, this installation featured Abramovic sitting, immobile, for over 700 hours. Now a well-established artist worldwide, she even became the subject of a HBO documentary of the same name which explored her life in conjunction with the MoMA installation. [Image via Getty]