Vanessa Beecroft

Vanessa Beecroft 5

Beecroft in White Madonna with Twins (2006)
Born (1969-04-25)April 25, 1969
Genoa, Italy
Nationality Italian
Education Civico Liceo Artistico Nicolò Barabino, Architettura, Genoa
Accademia Ligustica Di Belle Arti Pittura, Genoa
Brera Academy, Milan
Known for Performance, Photography, Drawing, Painting, Sculpture
Notable work VB Performances
Movement Relational art

Vanessa Beecroft (born April 25, 1969) is an Italian contemporary artist living in Los Angeles.

Artistic practice

Vanessa Beecroft's work addresses conceptual concerns as well as aesthetic concerns. Her performance art is often large scale and often involves 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. 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]

Beecroft's performances have been described as art, fashion, brilliant, terrible, evocative, provocative, disturbing, sexist, and empowering.[3] The primary material in her work is the live female figure. 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.[2]

Performances

VB61, Still Death! Darfur Still Deaf? (2007) at the 52nd Venice Biennale

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.[4][5][6]

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-Élysées in Paris.[7] For the same event, Beecroft placed models on the shelves next to Louis Vuitton bags.[8]

Beecroft's work—specifically VB46, at the Gagosian Gallery in California—has come under fire by feminist artist groups like the Toxic Titties. Beecroft does not acknowledge the time commitment, exertion, and treatment endured by her models, leading critics to question the conceptual ideas put forth in her work.[9]

On the occasion of the 52nd Venice Biennale, Beecroft staged one of her most politically engaged performances, VB61, Still Death! Darfur Still Deaf? (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.[10]

Beecroft’s attempt to adopt Sudanese twins was the topic of the documentary The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins by Pietra Brettkelly, which was included in the Sundance Film Festival's World Cinema Documentary Competition. The film presents Beecroft as a "hypocritically self-aware, colossally colonial pomo narcissist" and chronicles her "damaging quotes and appalling behavior" as she attempts to adopt two Sudanese orphans for use in an art exhibit.[11] [12]

One of her recent performances, 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.[13]

Personal

From her marriage to sociologist Greg Durkin she has two sons.[14]

Exhibitions

Selected Solo Exhibitions and Performances

2016

  • Vanessa Beecroft: Polaroids 1993.2016 Royal Palace, Milan

2014

  • VB74 MAXXI Museum, Rome

2013

  • Galleria Nazionale Arte Antica, Rome

2012

  • Dickinson Roundell Inc., New York

2011

  • VB70 Galleria Lia Rumma, Milan
  • VB69 Art Basel Miami

2010

  • VB68 Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt a. M., Germany
  • VB66 Mercato Ittico, Naples, Italy [15]

2009

  • VB65 PAC, Milan, Italy[16]
  • VB64 Deitch Studies, Long Island City, New York, USA

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, USA
  • VB56 Louis Vuitton Champs-Élysées, Paris, France
  • VB55 Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany

2004

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, USA
  • 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 Musée, Lyon, France
  • VB28 XLVII Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte, Venice Biennale, 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

Public collections

Bibliography

References

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