Bella Hadid and Naomi Campbell Attended Marina Abramovic’s Very Artsy 70th Birthday

Famed performance artist Marina Abramovic can do a lot. She can confront both your fears and your desires with her work. She can move Björk to tears with a single look. And she can cause Bella Hadid and Naomi Campbell, supermodels of different generations, to show up and pose together on the red carpet of her 70th Birthday celebration.

The Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan’s Upper East Side was the site of the star-studded affair. In addition to Campbell and Hadid, luminaries like Givenchy designer Ricardo Tisci, New York nightlife queen Ladyfag, and art world regulars like Dustin Yellin, RoseLee Goldberg, and Sandra Brant also showed up.

In case you’re wondering, Abramovic’s actual birthday was on November 30, but she chose to delay the event until the New York art world was done with it’s annual decampment to Miami Beach for the Art Basel festivities. Not even Abramovic can compete with Basel, but she can still make the biggest red carpet statement of the night at the age of 70, plus a few days.

All guests at the party were greeted with a card informing them, “Welcome to my 70th Birthday” and an agenda for the night. Part one was entitled “Silence.” Abramovic instructed guests to put on noise-cancelling headphone and refrain from verbal communication while lounging in chairs on the Guggenheim’s main floor. Upon the sound of a gong, guests were instructed to remove their headphones and get ready for part two, “Entertainment.” That included a speech from the artist herself, as well as a rendition of Frank Sinatra’s classic “My Way” by the singer ANOHNI, a close Abramovic friend.

At some point, guests were invited to put on a rectangular application of gold leaf face paint over their lips for reasons we’re still not clear on. Then again, good artworks (or at least good artsy party favors) tend to lead you to ponder rather than explain themselves. It sure made for some great party photos.

In any event, Hadid and Campbell were the highlight guests, even without gold paint. The pair is also old friends at this point. Hadid has previously cited Campbell as her model “mentor,” while Campbell has confessed to helping to teach both Bella and her sister Gigi how to walk. The pair have also both recently posed for W in standout solo shoots: Naomi Campbell posed for Steven Klein in the season’s latest looks, while Bella Hadid rocked the most recent haute couture back in our October issue.