Vanessa Beecroft

Vanessa Beecroft (Genoa, Italy, 1969) is an Italian contemporary artist living in Los Angeles.

Artistic practice

Beecroft uses a unique, personal, artistic language. Her work is a complex fusion of conceptual issues and aesthetic concerns, focusing on large-scale performance art, usually involving live female models (often nude). At her performances, video recordings and photographs are made, to be exhibited as documentation of the performances, but also as separate works of art. The work and her conceptual approach is neither performance nor documentary, but something in between, and closer to Renaissance painting. She sets up a structure for the participants in her live events to create their own ephemeral composition [ [http://www.deitch.com/artists/press_text.php?pressId=12 Deitch ] ] . The performances are existential encounters between models and audience, their shame and their expectations. Each performance is made for a specific location and often references the political, historical, or social associations of the place where it is held. Beecroft’s work is deceptively simple in its execution, provoking questions around identity politics and voyeurism in the complex relationship between viewer, model and context. [Francis Summers: "Vanessa Beecroft" Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, November 16 2007, http://www.groveart.com/]

Performances

Beecroft’s first exhibition was VB01, in Milan, 1993, in which she presented a series of drawings along with the past eight years of her Food Diary. The following year she exhibited in New York for the first time, at the Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York. Later in 1994, VB08 took place at P.S.1 in Long Island City, NY.

More recently, in VB39, 1999 and in VB42, 2000 the artist explored the possibilities of fully male performances with the U.S. Navy in San Diego, CA and with the U.S. Silent Service at the Intrepid in New York, respectively.

Beecroft's performances have taken place at many notable art institutions: VB28 at the Venice Biennale in 1997; VB35 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York in 1998; VB40 at the MCA, Sydney, Australia in 1999; VB43 at the Gagosian Gallery in London in 2000; VB45 at the Vienna Kunsthalle in 2001; VB50 at the São Paulo Bienal, Brazil in 2002; VB52, part of a retrospective show, at the Castello di Rivoli in 2003; VB54 at Terminal 5 of JFK Airport New York in 2004, a performance banned by the authorities.

VB55, a recent example, featured one hundred women standing still in Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie for three hours, each woman oiled from the waist up and wearing nothing but a pair of pantyhose. It was staged in April 2005.

In October 2005, Beecroft staged a performance on the occasion of the opening of the Louis Vuitton store on the Champs-Elysees in Paris [ [http://sev.prnewswire.com/retail/20051009/NYSU02710102005-1.html Louis Vuitton :: Louis Vuitton Hosts a Star-Studded Celebration for the Inauguration of Its Champs-Elysees House ] ] . For the same event, Beecroft placed models on the shelves next to Louis Vuitton bags. [ [http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/laboulbenne/laboulbenne10-26-05.asp artnet Magazine - PARIS À LA MODE ] ]

Her most recent performance, VB61, took place in the Pescheria del Rialto [ [http://www.teknemedia.net/magazine/dettail.html?mId=2684 Vanessa Beecroft - Pescheria di Rialto, Venezia / Dettaglio articolo / Magazine di arte ] ] in Venice on 8 June 2007. It involved "approximately 30 Sudanese women lying face-down on a white canvas on the ground, simulating dead bodies piled on top of one another" and represented the genocide in Darfur, Sudan [ [http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=199996 Vanessa Beecroft VB61 Still Death! Darfur Still Deaf? ] ] .

Beecroft’s attempt to adopt Sudanese twins was the topic of the documentary "The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins", which was included in the Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Documentary Competition. [citation | title= LETTER FROM... More than Movies | author= Glen Helfand | publisher=ARTINFO | year=2008 | date= January 23, 2008 | url= http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/26656/more-than-movies/ | accessdate=2008-04-24 ]

Personal

Beecroft is married to sociologist Greg Durkin. [Thurman, Judith. Essay: "The Wolf at the Door" in "Cleopatra's Nose". New York, Simon and Schuster, 2006.] . They have two sons.

Bibliography

"Vanessa Beecroft: Performances" (by V. Beecroft, D. Hickey; Germany, Hatje Cantz, 1999)
"Vanessa Beecroft Performances, 1993–2003" (exh. cat. by V. Beecroft, M. Beccaria, et al.; Rivoli, Castello, Mus. A. Contemp., 2003)
"Vanessa Beecroft: Photographs, Films, Drawings" (exh. cat. by V. Beecroft, T. Kellein; Bielefeld, Städt. Ksthalle, 2004)
"Vanessa Beecroft: VB53" (by V. Beecroft et al.; Italy, Charta, 2005)
"Vanessa Beecroft: Drawings and Paintings 1993-2007" (exh. cat. by V. Beecroft, Giacinto Di Pietrantonio; Edizioni Electa, 2007)

External links

* [http://www.vanessabeecroft.com Artist's website]
* [http://www.vanessabeecroft-cosmicgalerie.com Vanessa Beecroft at Cosmic Galerie]
* [http://www.deitch.com/artists/sub.php?artistId=20 Vanessa Beecroft at Deitch Projects]
* [http://www.designboom.com/portrait/beecroft.html Vanessa Beecroft at designboom.com]
* [http://supervert.com/essays/art/vanessa_beecroft Vanessa Beecroft- Classic Cruelty]
* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,1455336,00.html Review of VB55 by The Guardian]
** [http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,11710,1456607,00.html Take 100 nudes ...]
** [http://www.freunde-der-nationalgalerie.de/beecroft VB55 in Berlin]
* [http://www.homines.com/arte_xx/vanessa_beecroft/index.htm Las pinturas vivas de Vanessa Beecroft]

References