Monday a.m. Artist Post 2/16

Born in 1969 in Genoa, Italy, performance artist Vanessa Beecroft has shown in numerous galleries around the world and worked with labels like Louis Vuitton and Kanye West. Beecroft is known for her performances with dozens of nude females that are often accessorized in wigs, high heels, or body paint. Beecroft has a very particular eye for which girls she uses in her performances. She wants to emulate a certain physical and mental metamorphosis with her models during the performances. Taken from an article from the Sundance 2008 website by Sheigh Crabtree, Beecroft explains the process she intends for her models to undertake. “Standing there for hours, they go from beautiful to miserable to exhausted. The melancholy and the uncertainty and embarrassment is what I look for”(1). Beecroft is known to give specific directions to the models and one of those each time is to not speak a word and the rest the girls determine whether to abide by or deviate from. From the Metro ArtWork Website Beecroft’s performances are described as “a complex fusion of conceptual issues and aesthetic concerns, focusing on large-scale performance art, usually involving live female models (often nude).” Beecroft documents her performances with video recording and photography with the intention of later on using the moving and still footage for separate pieces of art away from the performance that it’s involved with.
Recently Beecroft and Kanye West collaborated and used West’s listening event where he debuted his 808’s & Heartbreak album to have one of Beecroft’s live performances present. This musical and performance art collaboration event had great success for both artists. Written about in Fader Magazine, the event occurred at the Ace Gallery in Los Angeles and began with about forty nude women, most wearing masks made out of faux wool, standing in the middle; the white girls were in the back and the black girls were in the front. During this part of the performance, Kanye’s entire album played without an introduction of him or his work. Colorful strobes were used to backlight the girls who as the performance continued on for quite some time began to sit down. Once the performance was completed and Kanye’s album played through in its entirety, West introduced Beecroft and spoke about how his album is about “the freedom to do what you want to do…”. Also he said that the album was about emotional nakedness, which helped tie in Beecroft’s performance with his album.
Vanessa Beecroft’s work and mine are very different in ways, however I find myself attracted to her distinct use of color and movement with her models. Looking at the images from “VB60” of dozens of nude and red robed Asian women on a staircase has a way of keeping the eye moving from model to model. I have looked at it several times and am interested in the way that because of their positioning my eye seems to wander in and out of the image and am very pleased with how the composition affects me. I want to incorporate use of color in my performances so I can attempt to achieve not only her aesthetic but also her unique way of forming a very dynamic and sound image of a performance.

Sundance Article

MetroArtWork Website & Article

Vanessa Beecroft's Artist Website

Fader Magazine Article