POISE A LOOK INTO THE RAW FORM OF VANESSA BEECROFT
FEB 2016
VOL. 29
$9.98
RAW FO RM
a look into photography with a purpose captured by vanessa beecroft by sydney aaranson
Vanessa Beecroft is an Italian artist living in Los Angeles. Her performance art revolves around eating disorders, fashion and the nude body. Her recent work has become political and she questions the prejudices and cultural stereotypes constructed by the pillars of western society while viewing the African Early LifeBeecroft was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1969. Her father was British, who was initially a teacher and later became a dealer of classic cars. Her mother was an Italian, who was also a teacher. She was named Vanessa after actress Vanessa Redgrave whose role in Michelangelo Antonioni's “Blow Up�, was admired by her parents. They moved to Holland Park, London, after Vanessa Beecroft was born.
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Beecroft described her childhood as difficult and unhappy, as later her brother was sent to live with her maternal grandparents in Genoa. She moved with her mother to Malcesine where her mother joined the local school. When she was eleven, they shifted to Santa Margherita, so they could be close to her brother. She had started drawing when she was very young and in the beginning she made drawings of her dolls. At the age of twelve her problematic relationship with food began. With the onset of puberty, her body started becom-
lan, where she studied. A professor invited her to participate in a group show at Inga-Pin gallery and she converted the pages of her diary into a white cube shaped sculpture. Besides, she made 30 girls act like live sculptures and walk around the gallery wearing her clothes. All these women resembled Beecroft and had eating disorders. On the walls of the gallery there were drawings and watercolours of emaciated body parts of women suffering from eating disorders.
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She questions the prejudices and cultural stereotypes constructed by the pillars of western society.” ing feminine, which became a cause for panic to her. She felt that she could not be like a boy anymore and she noticed that eating made her figure more womanly. This is when she became paranoid about food. At the age of fourteen, she joined an art school in Genoa, visited galleries and had started keeping a diary called the “Book of Food”, in which she made diligent entries about every food item that she consumed. The text was interspersed with desperate comments like, “I am a pig",” Slut" and” Dogged Bulimia". “The Book of Food” is a list of every grain and portion of food that she consumed between 1983 and 1993. In 1993, she showed this diary at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera Scenografia , Mi-
Jeffrey Deitch, a New York art dealer invited Vanessa to perform in the opening of his newest gallery, Deitch Projects. This show brought Beecroft onto the international stage. Deitch became her dealer and on his insistence, Beecroft moved from Milan to Brookyln. Deitch was attracted to the multifarious themes and influences in Beecroft's art. It came from a mix of traditional Italian style of painting like the mannerist painting and Baroque style mixed with the tradition of performance and live art. It also borrowed some concepts from reality television and fashion shows. In the beginning of her career, the models in her performance pieces, wore cheap clothes and enacted roles of actresses from Jean Luc-Godard.
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“Her recent work has become political and she questions western society while viewing the Africans.”
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By the western society who view their difference in customs and practices as primitivism. Currently Beecroft lives in Los Angeles. She has collections in Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Italy, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., Hood Museum of Art, New Hampshire, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her exhibits include 1993 Galleria IngaPin, Milan, 1994 - Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, 1996 Deitch Projects, New York, 1997 Institute of Contemporary art, London, 2001 Gagosian gallery, London, 2005 Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 2011 Art Basel, Miami, 2013 Galleria Nazionale Arte Antica, and 2014 MAXXI Museum, Rome. Her Galleries today are in London, GB; New York, US; and Milan, IT. The exhibits are titled (in order) Tornabuoni Art, Hamburg Kennedy Photographs, and Galleria Lia Rumma. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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. Beecroft’s attempt to adopt Sudanese twins was the topic of the documentary The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins, which she submitted to Sundance Film Festival's World Cinema Competition.
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Eating disorders, fashion, and the simply nude body
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Runaway
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Luchino Visconti and classical paintings of Rembrandt and Holbein. But as Beecroft became more successful and the budgets of her artworks increased, she started to hire professional models and designers and make-up artists. She has collaborated with designers like Dolce & Gabbana, Tom Ford and Helmut Lang. She also received support from Vogue Italia’s editor and her friend and mentor Franca Sozzani. Progressively, the models in her artworks have been stripped or appear as partially nude. Beecroft has been subject to a lot of criticism. Her performances have been dismissed as fashion shows and have been called anti-feminist by the older generation of feminists. Beecroft maintains that these models are veritable self-portraits. Recently in the 52nd Venice Biennale, Beecroft’s art took a political subtext when she made 30 Sudanese women lie on a white canvas on the floor in a pile, mimicking death. This was a comment on the recent genocide in Darfur, Sudan. One of her most controversial works has been a portrait of her holding a pair of Sudanese twins, who suckle her breasts. The story behind this portrait is that Beecroft visited an orphanage in Darfur and found these twins and made an attempt to adopt them. She finally ditched the idea and the entire process of her trip, her act of photographing the kids for her artwork, and her conversations with her husband about the adoption has been part of a documentary called “The Art Star and The Sudanese Twins” by a New Zealand filmmaker called Pietra Brettkelly and was screened at the Sundance Film Festival. Recently she rehashed the “Last Supper” by Leonardo da Vinci by making a dozen of African immigrants sit on a table and eat roast chicken with bare hands. It was an attempt to show the prejudice against the Africans, who are termed as savages.
Project Description This project required me to create a magazine spread with a feature article on Vanessa Beecroft. After researching her work and presenting her to my class, I created four spreads and a cover for a photography magazine. The main focus of this project was learning how to properly use the grid and learning how to understand hierarchy. Also, learning about typography rules and how to effectively use type in design.
Colophon Poise magazine designed by Sydney Aaranson, Spring 2016 Printed at Jayhawk Ink on French Paper 80lb Text Fonts: ITC New Baskerville, Helvetica Resources: codiceitalia2015.com/en/arti/40-vanessabeecroft-en vevo.com/watch/kanye-west/runaway-(extended-video-version)/USUV71002229 ursulageisselmann.com/index.php?/fashion/vanessa-beecroft/ itsliquid.com/featured-artist-vanessa-beecroft. html artfacts.net/en/artist/vanessa-beecroft-4538/profile.html
POISE A LOOK INTO THE RAW FORM OF VANESSA BEECROFT
FEB 2016
VOL. 29
$9.98
POISE
VOL. 29
FEB 2016