Peep toe pumps, undergarments, snakeskin pantyhose and the au naturel are but, the thin surface of Vanessa Beecroft and her work. What she creates is both elaborate and extravagant, but that is the now for the Italian Performance Artist Vanessa Beecroft. This is the before. Born in Genoa, Italy, Vanessa Beecroft attended two near by art institutions. One of them was Civico Liceo Artistico Nicolo’ Barabino from 1983 to 1987 for ‘Architettura’ which translates to ‘Architecture’. The other was Accademia Ligustica Di Belle Arti from 1987-1988 for ‘Pittura’, which translates to ‘Painting’. Then during the year of 1988 to 1993 she attended a third art institution called Accademia Di Belle Arti Di Brera in city north of Genoa, Milan, Italy, for ‘Scenografia’, which translates to ‘The Art of Perspective’. Vanessa Beecroft is still performing to this day and her most recent work was in 2010. She has completed about 66 pieces of performance work.
It all started in 1993 where she officially embarked on her journey into the art world. Her first show was in Milan, Italy where she exhibited her diary, “Despair,” that she kept writing in everyday from 1987-1993. She felt that her diary was too distant and lacked, so she added thirty girls she pulled off the street for the exhibition opening. They were dressed in Vanessa Beecroft’s personal wardrobe. The thirty girls wore mostly red, yellow, pink and orange clothing accented with high-heeled shoes. They were told to walk around the gallery space around her book.
Her books contained her emotional impulses and anxiety on the food that she had to deal with everyday. An interesting fact about her diary was that its original use was intended for her to get help and get over her bulimic tendencies. During this exhibition she discovers her style that is somewhat cinematic where her work on stage is separate from the area containing the audience. She wants subtle and detached, so that the audience can reflect their own personality and impulses. In this work, the audience is not compelled to participate in her performance artwork, but to only be aware and participate emotionally.
Another important performance was a performance in 2007 called “Vb61 Still Death! Darfur. Still Deaf?” She first showed it in Venice, Italy. What she did in this work was that she painted thirty Sudanese women. However, the way they were arranged lying face down on the gigantic canvas made it look like they were dead. The paint used was red too. She made splatters and drips around the thirty naked Sudanese women. This performance represents the ongoing horrible massacres in Africa, particularly the genocide happening in the Darfur area of Sudan. The graphic nature represented in “Vb61” is also a statement about the public’s somewhat indifferent ways due to the spread of violence in the media.
She was able to have exhibitions around the world like France, England, Japan, America and other places. For instance, her piece called “Vb7” was shown at the Andrea Rosen Gallery in Long Island City, New York. She is very popular and name brands like Louis Vuitton, Prada and Tom Ford. She married to a Sociologist named Greg Durkin and she has two sons. Her performances are existential encounters between models and the audience. She has a fond of using a large amount of people in her work and they are usually naked. However, they aren’t always naked. Sometimes they can have only shoes on or only shirts on or they can have a wig. What she dresses her models in varies. She calls her hired models her “army” and she is positioned as their commander and they follow her set rules, which represents political, historical and or social aspects.
Vanessa Beecroft has received a lot of attention and has caused some controversy. People say her work is just voyeurism and nothing more. One unknown skeptical art critique was quoted saying her work is a “Hooters for intellectuals.” However in her defense, Leonardo Dicaprio said her work was “dope” in 1994 and a prominent art historian said that her work was “the best thing since Gilbert and George performed ‘The Singing Sculpture’ at Sonnabend Gallery.” It is Feminism vs. Exploitation. The feminism view is that Beecroft is showing the beautiful entity that cannot be touched and evokes the need for something to happen within the male and female audience. The Exploitation view sees how she makes her models stand in one place in high heels for three hours.
More controversy arises when she goes to Sudan and tries to adopt malnourished Sudanese twin babies. She wished to use them in her work and she did creating a “Virgin Mary” type scene with her breastfeeding the twins. It was called “The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins.” That enraged many people and a lot of people saw the photo as derogatory.
She received a similar reaction when she created a “Last Supper” type scene with her work “Vb65.” On a twelve-meter table for three hours, twenty-four African immigrant men, some dressed and some half dressed, ate a chicken dinner slowly without cutlery. Of course, the work she made was to represent something else and she did not think people would take it in a negative way. She wished to express the way people see the African race as savage. For the photo with her and the Sudanese twin babies she wanted to tell people to help those in need like the malnourished twins.
Vanessa Beecroft was quoted saying something along the context that she feels freer to perform in Italy. That is where she performed the “Vb65” piece in 2009. It was like somehow she knew, she had a gut feeling, that society would probably attack her like when she created “The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins” around the same time she made “Vb61 Still Death! Darfur. Still Deaf?”
I can understand her feeling and why she would perform in her comfortable zone in Italy. The way Vanessa Beecroft expresses herself in her creative works is that she creates and then steps back from her work. She wants her audience to create and interpret for themselves like a true performance artist. A performance artist doesn’t hand out the facts plain as day on a silver platter. They go about their own concept in a roundabout way symbolically. Vanessa Beecroft wants to create an intimate feeling between her models in her own fantasy world and the audience who watches them during the three hours of their exhibition. Their vulnerability and unapproachable aura, I bet makes the audience understand what she wants them to see. I believe this. I believe she does not want people just to see, “Oh, they are naked and wearing shoes.” I think her work takes time to understand and can be understood more in person.
