Vanessa Beecroft

VB 53 provides documentation of Vanessa Beecroft's most recent performance at Pitti Immagine Uomo 66 in Florence's Horticultural Garden. 21 models of varying appearance and race were planted in a mass of earth in the tepidarium. All were nude except for a single accessory: Helmut Lang shoes that wrapped around their ankles, separating their bare legs from the bare, rough earth. According to Beecroft, “The sole is reference to land art. Very dark and humid, like the rich foam of cultivated fields... The performance juxtaposes the purity of the female body, their nudity, with the dirty color of the soil and its material. Some models look like lillies, others like potatoes. Lilies and potatoes can also grow in filth.” The 50 images in this book illuminate Beecroft's signature issues: the body, beauty and identity.

Vanessa Beecroft's performances have been described as art, fashion, brilliant, terrible, evocative, provocative, disturbing, sexist and empowering. The primary material in her work is the live female figure, which remains ephemeral and separate. 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. The artist's provocative tabeaux are accompanied here by the drawings and backstage Polaroids she uses in planning her often-disturbing performances. Includes an extensive interview with Beecroft, which touches on topics informing her work, including men, anorexia, exercise, family, film and beauty.