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Vanessa Beecroft
Conceptual Framework: World
Beecroft would have been 15 years old when, back in 1984, a political art
group called the Guerrilla Girls attacked the New York’s Metropolitan
Museum of Art’s curatorial policies by circulating a tract which read
in part, Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?
Less than 5% of the Modern Art section are women, but 85% of the nudes
are female. The Guerrilla Girls might have been thinking revival last
year, when Beecroft brought her show into the main rotunda are of the hallowed
Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Conceptual Framework: Artist
Vanessa Beecroft, born in Genoa, Italy, 1969 is an Italian contemporary
artist living in New York. From 1983 - 1987 she studied architecture, 1987
– 1988, painting, 1988 - 1993 stage design. Her performance works
that feature the installation of groups of young women, and more recently
military men, have been hosted by museums and galleries throughout the world.
Conceptual Framework: Artworks
VB 16 performance installation, live models wearing identical platinum
wigs, high heels flesh coloured bras, panties and pantyhose.
The primary material in Beecroft’s work is the live figure, which
remains ephemeral, separate and unmediated by any device we normally accept
as artform, such as painting or photography. In this performance VB16,
Vanessa Beecroft sets a group of characters, a homogenous selection of almost
nude young women, in a tableau vivant. All the components of the installation,
the number and look of the girls, what they wear and how they pose, have
been meticulously chosen by the artist to mirror her concerns, usually about
her own body. For the artist, 'the girls' are at the same time the basic
material of her work as well as projections of herself. During the performance,
lasting for several hours, they are silent, immobile and impassive, not
communicating with the audience, occasionally breaking their initial order
to sit or stretch. In this way the artwork develops a life of its own.
Critical Analysis using the Postmodern/Cultural Frames
Artmaking Practice: Ideas
Beecroft has struggled to control an obsession with food since the age of
12. She suffers from what psychiatrists call
exercise bulimia, a compulsive need to burn off unwanted calories using
excessive exercise. Beecroft uses a unique, personal, artistic language
in her installations which reenact the artists concerns with her own body.
The work and her conceptual approach is neither performance nor documentary,
but something in between, and critics have seen parallels with Renaissance
painting. She sets up a structure for the participants in her live events
to create their own ephemeral composition. The performances are strange,
embarrassing encounters between models and audience. Each performance is
made for a specific location and often references the political, historical,
or social associations of the place where it is held. Her works also contain
references to art, film and theatre.
The drama of Vanessa Beecroft’s work derives from her use of live
human subjects. In inspiration her work is essentially classical. Nude and
semi-nude females, shorn of any trappings that might express their individuality,
obliged to remain as silent and immobile as possible, posed vertically and
arranged in a group composition on a horizontal plane — the sum effect
is something like a painting but with one crucial difference: Beecroft’s
subjects are not made of paint but of living flesh. To abstract from the
life model in order to paint a timeless figure is one thing, but to abstract
the life model herself is another. What appears as classicism in the painting
becomes de-personalisation and suppression of individuality in Beecroft’s
performance installation. The mathematical techniques of proportion used
in painting — the Golden Mean and the rule of three— become
anorexia and girdles in the Beecroft’s work. Fashion is used by Beecroft
not to individuate but to homogenize, and even nudity is exploited not as
an expression of sexuality but rather as a way of reducing the models to
an appearance of sameness — nudity is, after all, the original uniform.
The individuality of the artist is suppressed, as well as the individuality
of the live models she uses.
Artmaking Practice: Actions
Always titled VB and a number the artist’s live happenings
follow a script – first, assemble a number of female bodies sufficient
to fill, when spaced out roughly arm’s length from one another, a
particular art space. The models are practically naked and look alike. Sometimes
they even have matching wigs, enhancing the uniform, non-individual dimension.
The few items of clothing have grown increasingly sophisticated, and the
label is often named: Gucci, Manolo Blahnik, Yves Saint Laurent. The models
are staring blankly into space, without relating to one another or to the
audience. Whereas the classical artist gives order to his compositions,
Beecroft gives orders to her models. Typically these are rudimentary, along
the lines of:
(1) do not move;
(2) do not talk;
(3) do not interact with the audience.
These rules serve the aesthetic function of uniting the girls as a group
and therefore as a single image. However, simply because the models are
human, this method leads into a gray area somewhere between ethics and aesthetics.
When an artist controls a paintbrush, it’s called skill. But when
an artist controls people, what is it called?
At her performances, there are video recordings and photographs, to be exhibited
as documentation of the performances, but also as separate works of art.
Conceptual Framework: Audience
Vanessa Beecroft’s performances are initially seductive to her audience.
People want to look at other good-looking people, because good-looking people
are good to look at. And a survey of advertising and cinema provides more
than a little evidence to suggest that when good-looking people take off
their clothing, we like to look at them even more. The artist casts the
audience for her performances installation in the role of voyeurs. The performances
often last for several hours, the models are semi-naked, they only move
occasionally to relieve muscle tension, they do not communicate with the
audience in any way. An audience can only look and soon begin to feel uncomfortable
in their role of voyeur. Ethical issues arise relating to objectification
and exploitation, but no answers are provided. The audience can become as
uncomfortable as the models. The tableaux vivant of beautiful near-nude
women is no longer seductive but becomes increasingly disturbing.
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