Vanessa Beecroft

Vanessa Beecroft
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.

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, racist, sexist, and empowering. 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.

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 City for the first time, at the Andrea Rosen Gallery. Later in 1994, VB08 took place at P.S.1 in Long Island City, New York.

In VB39 (1999) and in VB42 (2000), the artist explored the possibilities of fully male performances with the US Navy in San Diego, California, and with the US Silent Service (submarine) at the Intrepid in New York City, 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.