Vanessa Beecroft

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Vanessa Beecroft
Born	April 25, 1969 (1969-04-25) Genoa, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Field	Performance, Photography, Drawing, Painting, Sculpture

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

Contents 1 Artistic practice 2 Performances 3 Personal 4 Exhibitions 5 Bibliography 6 External links 7 References

[edit] Artistic practice

Beecroft's work is a 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 ^[1]. 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.^[2]

Vanessa Beecroft's performances have been described as art, fashion, brilliant, terrible, evocative, provocative, disturbing, sexist, and empowering. The primary material in her work is the live female figure, which remains ephemeral, and separate. These women, mainly unclothed, similar, unified through details like hair color, or identical shoes, stand motionless, unapproachable and regimented in the space while viewers watch them. Neither performance nor documentary, Beecroft's live events are recorded through photography and film, but her conceptual approach is actually closer to painting: she makes contemporary versions of the complex figurative compositions that have challenged painters from the Renaissance onwards. Beecroft's more recent work has a slightly more theatrical approach—the uniforms are period clothing, not nudity, and some of her performances include food, while others have featured men in military attire.

[edit] 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 an exhibit called Terminal 5 at the TWA Flight Center of JFK Airport in 2004, an exhibition that closed abruptly after the building itself was vandalized during an opening party.^[3][4][5]

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^[6]. For the same event, Beecroft placed models on the shelves next to Louis Vuitton bags.^[7]

VB61, took place in the Pescheria del Rialto ^[8] 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^[9].

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.^[10]

Her most recent performance, VB65, took place at PAC in Milan in March 2009, and featured a "Last Supper" of African immigrants, legal and illegal, dressed in suits, eating chicken without cutlery.^[11]

[edit] Personal

• Born 1969: Genoa, Italy
• 1983 - 1987: Civico Liceo Artistico Nicol Barabino Architettura, Genoa
• 1987 - 1988: Accademia Ligustica Di Belle Arti Pittura, Genoa
• 1988 - 1993: Accademia di Belle Arti, Brera (Stage Design), Milan, Italy

From her marriage to sociologist Greg Durkin she has two sons.^[12]

[edit] Exhibitions

Selected Exhibitions

2009 VB65 PAC, Milan, Italy[13] VB64 Deitch Studies, Long Island City, New York, U.S.A. 2008 VB63 VBKW, Ace Gallery, Los Angeles VB62 Lo Spasimo, Palermo, Sicily, Italy 2007 VB61 Still Death! Darfur Still Deaf? Pescheria Di Rialto, Venice, Italy VB60 Shinsegae, Seoul, Korea 2006 VBLV 11th Art Forum, Berlin, Germany VB59 National Gallery, London, UK Alphabet Concept, Espace Louis Vuitton, Paris, France 2005 VB58 Push Button House, Collins Park, Art Basel, Miami, U.S.A. VB56 Louis Vuitton Champs-Élysées, Paris, France VB55 Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany 2004 VB54 Terminal 5 at the TWA Flight Center, JFK airport, New York, U.S.A. VB53 Tepidarium, Giardino dell'Orticultura, Florence, Italy 2003 VB52 and Retrospective, Castello di Rivoli Museo di Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy 2002 VB51 Schloss Vinsebeck, Steinheim, Germany VB50 São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo, Brazil 2001 VB48 Palazzo Ducale, Genoa, Italy VB47 Peggy Guggenheim Museum, Venice, Italy VB46 Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles, U.S.A. VB45 Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria 2000 VB43 Gagosian Gallery, London, UK VB42 Intrepid: The Silent Service, The Intrepid Sea - Air - Space Museum, Whitney Biennial, New York, U.S.A. 1999 VB40 Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia VB39 “US. NAVY SEALs“, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA VB38 Galerie Analix, Geneva, Switzerland VB37 Wacoal Art Center, Tokyo, Japan 1998 VB36 Galerie Fur Zeitgenossische Kunst, Leipzig, Germany VB35 “Show“, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY VB34 Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden

1997 VB33 Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), London VB32 Germany, Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach VB31 Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston, MA VB30 II Biennial, Santa Fe, NM VB29 FRAC, Le Nouveau Musee, Lyon, France VB28 XLVII Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte, Venice Biennial, Venice, Italy VB27 Galerie Analix, Geneva, Switzerland VB26 Galleria Lia Rumma, Naples, Italy 1996 VB25 Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands VB24 Galerie Ghislaine Hussenot, Paris, France VB23 Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany VB22 Miu Miu Store, New York, NY VB21 Galleria Massimo De Carlo, Milan, Italy VB20 Institute of Contemporary Art, (ICA), Philadelphia, PA VB19 The Renaissance Society, the University of Chicago, Chicago, IL VB18 CAPC, Musee d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, France VB17 The Dakis Joannou Collection, The Factory, Athens, Greece VB16 Deitch Projects, New York 1995 VB15 Foundation Cartier pour L’Art Contemporain,Paris, France VB14 Comune di Castelvetro di Modena, Italy VB13 “Play / Replica“, Basel Art Fair, Basel, Switzerland VB12 Associazione Culturale Arte Nova, Pescara, Italy VB11 Galerie Analix, Geneva, Switzerland 1994 VB10 Palazzina Liberty, Milan, Italy VB09 “Ein Blonder Traum“, Galerie Schipper & Krome, Cologne, Germany VB08 “Lotte im Kampf mit den Bergen“, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY VB07 “Lotte“, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, NY VB06 “R. Und Auch P.“, Castello di Rivoli, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli, Italy VB05 Serre di Rapolano, Rapolano Terme, Italy, VB04 “Nicht Versoehnt“, Trevi Flash Art Museum, Trevi, Italy VB03 “Maedchen in Uniform“, Galleria Massimo De Carlo, Milan, Italy VB02 “Jane bleibt Jane", Courtesy Fac-Simile, Milan, Italy 1993 VB01 “Film“, Galleria Inga-Pin,Milan, Italy

[edit] 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)

[edit] External links

• Artist's website
• Vanessa Beecroft at Cosmic Galerie
• Vanessa Beecroft at Deitch Projects
• Vanessa Beecroft at designboom.com
• Vanessa Beecroft- Classic Cruelty
• Review of VB55 by The Guardian
  • Take 100 nudes ...
  • VB55 in Berlin
• Las pinturas vivas de Vanessa Beecroft

[edit] References