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First Day

On the first day of WASH, I could tell we would be exploring media we had never thought of using before and expanding our imaginations further than we thought they could be stretched. For our first assignment, we had to transform ourselves into something else using newspaper. We had to start out by deciding if we were inspired by dreams or nightmares, then if we were male or female, and then if we were animate or inanimate. I chose nightmare, male, and inanimate and turned myself into a lego structure monster.

Vanessa Beecroft Essay for lecture

Vanessa Beecroft, Italy, 1969

            Vanessa Beecroft is a contemporary artist who currently lives in Los Angeles, California. She does many different forms of art. Her drawings primarily consist of simple sketches of parts of the human body or objects, such as clothing, that are shaped like the human body. Most of her paintings are of the human head or face, and the majority of the subjects seem to be female. She has also created many sculptures, predominantly featuring women as mothers or wives. What Beecroft is most known for though is her performance art. For most of her performance art, she uses large groups of live models. These models stand in some sort of organized formation and remain completely motionless. Her models are generally nude females but she has done a few performances with males dressed in some kind of matching work uniform. Her models are usually all connected by various characteristics such as having the same skin tone or hair color. Quite often, all her models wear the same pair of shoes. In some of her early performance art, she had girls in matching outfits and wigs arranged to stand still or move slowly, and the audience became part of the piece as they did the same while viewing the show.  Beecroft’s performances are considered to be fashionable and theatrical, and many people view her as a feminist.

            Vanessa Beecroft is conceptual and contemporary artist. Art Dealer Jeffrey Deitch described her art by saying, “Her work comes out very much from the tradition of Italian painting and sculpture - Italian Mannerist painting, Baroque painting, sculptors like Canova - and the tradition of performance art: Duchamp, Yves Klein, Gilbert and George.” When she was fourteen years old, she went to an art school called Civico Liceo Artistico Nicolo' Barabino located in Genoa, Italy. Four years later, she went to Accademia Ligustica Di Belle Arti, also located in Genoa, Italy. After a year, she went to Accademia Di Belle Arti Di Brera in Milan, Italy. Beecroft is sometimes called sexist and some see her as feminist because of her predominant use of women. These women are generally models and are very skinny. This is because Beecroft suffered many eating and exercising disorders throughout her life. She became obsessed with her food intake and body image at an early age, and it carried over into her art.

            I picked Vanessa Beecroft initially because the images of her work interested and intrigued me. She seemed to have a fascination with the human figure, especially the female figure, which I also have an obsession with. Upon further research, I found out that Beecroft and I have quite a bit more in common, and she has become a huge inspiration to me. When she was a child, she mostly played with boys and was frustrated at age 12 when her body began to look like a girl’s. I too was a tomboy as a child and resisted femininity as long as I could. And now that I am older, just like Beecroft, I have a fascination with feminism and the female figure. Another similarity I have is that I also struggled with and overcame an eating disorder and kept a food journal as well. Because I can relate to her in those ways, I feel like I can relate to her work even more than when I initially saw it.