Vanessa Beecroft


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Born in Genua, Italy, in 19690. Lives and works in New York.

The photographs of Vanessa Beecroft that Fundacion Proa presents are the documental support of her performances. Beecroft creates performances -almost exclusively with women- that are also registered in video format and photographs, and stand as independent works of art. The pictures presented in this occasion belong to VB45, and capture different moments of a performance that took place in Vienna, Austria, 2001. The video exhibited is the documental support of this performance.

In her performances, Beecroft composes "living pictures" with women who are in total silence, doing nothing at all, no definite action, and not showing any trace of their personal histories. These women, presented as simple visual elements, appear in the pictures as detached from reality. Beecroft applies specific procedures in order to emphasize this detachment: "I usually add a wig to the naked women so they look more like a drawing, distanced from real life. Nobody acts, nothing happens, they are not beginning or finishing any activity. They are simply there, ready to disappear as if someone has clicked "End" on a computer". In her pictures, Beecroft creates a vanishing effect.

The images have a classical inspiration. Beecroft presents cuasi-naked women (They are only wearing designers´ accessories: Gucci bikinis, Helmut Lang boots, Azzedine Alaia designs), groups of young women that resemble a Boticelli painting, almost still, ephemeral in their appearances, with a timeless look. Beecroft doesn´t make use of complete nudity, as she says: "I want women wearing high heels because this shows power, it is not nudity or natural pureness. When men see this women in high heels, as if they were dressed, facing the audience, OK, if that's what they want to see, there it is. I don't know if this will engender more respect or something else. Maybe after they see it twenty times they can start thinking in a different way. I'm not sure. It's an experiment". Women´s body is for Beecroft a domain of experimentation from where something new can emerge.

Although the performances (documented in photos and video) are Beecroft's personal landmark, the beginning of her career as an artist is related to painting. On her first exhibition, in Milan, 1993, she showed a series of watercolors along with written texts that belonged to an eight-year period of her personal diary. There she transcribed in details her eating habits, with notes referring to her deepest feelings: guilt, comments on her parents and references to her visits to the psychiatrist. Those intimate watercolors were not aimed to be exhibited; they were more like a personal therapeutic answer to her obsessions. According to Beecroft, "when I perceived that women were a strong visual material I quitted painting" and that's how she gave up painting as a means of expression to devote herself exclusively to performances, video and photography.

Vanessa Beecroft studied Architecture at the Civico Liceo Artistico Nicolo Barabino in Genua, her native city, and graduated in 1987. The following year, she was admitted to the Academia Liguistica Di Belli Arti (Genua), where she took graduate courses in painting. From 1988 to 1993, she studied Stage Design at the Academia Di Belle Arti di Brera (Milan). From 1993 on, Beecroft has showed her work in prominent institutions like the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Holland; Vienna Kunsthalle, Austria; Museum of Contemporany Art, Sydney; Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Institute of Contemporary Art, London; among others. She has participated in the 25th Sao Paulo Biennial, 47th Venice Biennial and the II Whitney Biennial.


http://www.vanessabeecroft.com
http://www.gagosian.com/gg/artists/beecroft/beecroft.html
http://www.supervert.com/essays/art/beecroft.html
http://www.parkettart.com/editions/56_beecroft/cont.htm

Vanessa Beecroft

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