Vanessa Beecroft ( born in 1967 in Genova, Italy) is an international contemporary artist. During her studies she was interested to transmit the psychological factor and the emotional one of the subjects represented and for this reason she approached performance art[1].
The settings of Vanessa’s performances are empty and aseptic and this permit to the artist to create an atmosphere which gets above the concrete aspect of reality. This choice makes her artworks more free and expressive but there is also an underlying ideology: performances are real artworks of contemporary art and for this reason Vanessa Beecroft believes that they must reside in museum spaces or expositive ones to be admired and analyzed in their deeply being.
This analyze comes from the public. Often in smart clothes, at the behest of the artist, they are in a situation apparently absurd where the formality of the event collides with the nudity of performances. The choice of naked women derive from a personal fact of the artist but this not exclude a possible future collaboration with men and homosexual.
The women are chose with rigid aesthetic canons imposed by Vanessa. During the performance they have to follow roles (given previously by the artist) for creating a geometrical composition. They can’t talk and interact with the public whose must feel distant and awe. This arouses a negative emotion created by the absence of the visual interaction. It’s difficult to conceive that the human in front of us, immersed in a shameless nudity, are conceived as simple objects of admiration where sensuality doesn’t emerge and leaves the place only to an awkward discomfort born in the public.
The purpose of Vanessa Beecroft is to create a subliminal message based on the “not belonging” of the women (acting the performance) in confront of the public. Her aim so is to annul human interaction putting in crisis the act of looking of the performers, who are works of art and for this reason they can’t have an involvement with the external, thus provoking a visual loss caused by the empty and inexpressive gaze of the women.
After 3-4 hours the tiredness advances in the women and they slowly return into their humanity. This means that if the women are tired they can sit down or take a comfortable position and starting looking around as human, observing the situation as a real person, abandoning their being of works of art.
In conclusion, a charming aspect of Beecroft’s creation is their uncontrollability. In fact she can only control the preparation of the performances and not the performance itself. But, despite all this, all her performances end always in a similar and linear way.
– Francesca –
[1] The performance art consists in a series of planned or casual actions that use the body for a communicative objective.
Circe 