Vanessa Beecroft- Art and Audience

“No talking. No eye contact. No expression. Nothing too fast or too slow……look, but don’t touch. Don’t get too close. To ogle or stare, or look longingly.¹”

Evidently, Vanessa Beecroft is very strict with her models, giving specific rules to which they have to abide by during their 3-hour performances. However, these rules are not just for the models, but for the audience as well, and as a result, the interactions of the “participants” become apart of the artwork itself².

Vanessa Beecroft is a provocative contemporary performance and installation artist. Her performances involve large groups of naked or near naked models in large formations within the institutional space. The models have been described as “ her tools, her materials and powerful catalysts for the activation of social relations between her art and its viewers.³” This can be seen in her work V46, 2001, a performance piece involving a model, whose pubic hair is died red circling a large group of nude models⁴. All these women possess pale makeup and dyed white hair. It is through this aesthetic homogeneity of the model congregation that Beecroft is able to manipulate her audience. That is, the audience watch this work from the sidelines unable to avoid being involved in the piece. As the models “occupy the same territory that we do, but not the same space⁵”. Also, the work Vb53, 2003 involves a large diverse group of women standing nude on top of a mound of soil within a greenhouse. Ultimately, for the participant, as Heartney states, a “sense of personal inadequacy in the face of the performers physical and behavioural perfection⁶” is created from these works. It is through the manipulation of such psychological effects that Beecroft’s work is so powerful⁷.

Vanessa Beecroft’s connection with her audience within her work can be seen in her recent exhibition of the work Vb64, 2009. The gallery space featured a long line of women’s figures spread out on the gallery floor and on funeral looking platforms ⁸. These bodies are a mixture of real and cast figures covered in white, an effect referred to by one reviewer as “blanched sameness”⁹. The models move around the space, the white from the models rubs off onto the cast figures and the gallery floor. It is the “theatrically titillating¹⁰” live performance of these models and the space used by Beecroft that makes the audience an instrumental part of her work.

It is therefore clear that Vanessa Beecroft’s art makes an immense impact on the role of the audience in contemporary art.

This is the link to the exhibition review of her recent work:

http://www.artreview.com/forum/topic/show?id=1474022%3ATopic%3A765235

1 Jan Avgikos, “Let the picture do the talking”. Parkett, No.56 (1999): 108.

2 Eleanor Heartney, Art and today. (phaidon press limited,2008), p. 392

3 Jan Avgikos, op.cit., 107.

4 Eleanor Heartney, op.cit., 399

5 Vanessa Beecroft, Dave Hickey. VB 08-36: Vanessa Beecroft performances. Ostfildern : Hatje Cantz, 2000: 6.

6 Ibid., p. 399.

7 Jan Avgikos, op.cit.,107.

8 David Everitt Howe, “Vanessa Beecroft:Vb64.” Art Review 32, (May 2009): 114.

9 David Everitt, Howe. Op.cit.,114.

10 Ibid., p.114.

Resources

Cianchi, Lapo; Frisa, Maria Lusia,;Bonami, Francessco; Rosevinge, Line. VB53: Vanessa Beecroft. Milano: Charta, 2005.
Beecroft, Vanessa; Dave Hickey. VB 08-36: Vanessa Beecroft performances. Ostfildern : Hatje Cantz, 2000.
Beecroft, Vanessa. “Vanessa Beecroft” http://www.vanessabeecroft.com/frameset.html (accessed October 15, 2009)
Heartney, Eleanor. Art and Today. phaidon press limited, 2008.
Seward, Keith; Tazzi, Pier Luigi; Avgikos, Jan. “Vanessa Beecroft” Parkett, no.56 (1999): 76-119
Howe, David Everitt. “Vanessa Beecroft:Vb64.” Art Review 32, (May 2009): 114. Located from art index http://ovidsp.tx.ovid.com.ezproxy1.library.usyd.edu.au (accessed October 15, 2009)


Images (top to bottom)

Vanessa Beecroft, Vb64, 2009, , photographic documentation of a performance, Deitch Projects New York. Reproduced from http://images.google.com.au(accessed 18 October, 2009)
Vanessa Beecroft, VB 53, 2003. Photographic documentation of a performance. Firenze, Italy. Reproduced from http://images.google.com.au(accessed 18 October, 2009
Vanessa Beecroft, VB 46, 2001. Photographic documentation of a performance. Los Angeles. Reproduced from http://iages.google.com.au(accessed October 18, 2009).