12 Things to Know About Vanessa Beecroft, Kanye West's Visual Art Collaborator

Image via Complex Original

Beecroft's repertoire, for the most part, involves the female nude. She has been known to stage shows with live models standing for hours on end (as with her Art Basel Miami Beach performance last night). While it is clear that she is engaging with the tradition of the female form—both idealized and criticized throughout the history of art and popular media—it is unclear what her message is.

"She's hailed as a feminist by some, while others have accused her of exploitation. But, then, Vanessa Beecroft has always thrived on contradictions," writes Nick Johnstone in an interview of the artist for The Guardian. Her use of fit female models has been criticized as exploitative, and Jonstone notes how critics have attacked Beecroft for not appearing naked herself. Yet, the artist calls her work—and many of her fans agree—"another form of feminism" in an interview with Lurve Magazine.

Beecroft's first official performance, VB01, was in 1993 in Milan. Some of her most notable shows since then include VB28 at the 1997 Venice Biennale, VB35 at the Guggenheim in New York, VB43 at London's Gagosian Gallery in 2000, and VB50 at the São Paulo Biennale in 2002. For the Venice Biennale in 2007, Beecroft presented one of her most politically charged pieces to date, VB61, Still Death! Darfur Still Deaf?. The piece represented the genocide in Darfur and included 30 Sudanese women laying on a white canvas on the ground, simulating dead bodies piled on top of each other.

Beecroft mentions on multiple occasions during an interview with Museo Magazine that Renaissance artists like Piero della Francesca and Michelangelo heavily influenced her work. Considering that the artist grew up in Genoa, Italy, it comes as no surprise that classic Italian art would play a part in her own artistic productions. This influence, however, is not a special case. She explains, "Classicism in Italy is like pop culture for Americans." As a result, her art touches upon common themes in classic Italian art; the Madonna and Child and the idealized female nude are just a few examples.

On Beecroft's website she lists her performances as VB01, VB02, etc. Although many artists like to use titles to further explain their work, Beecroft's lack of any linguistic signs really opens up her productions to complete individual interpretation.

Although Beecroft claims to never have consciously decided to use fashion as a subject of her work, stating that she "doesn't know fashion," the presence and influence of the medium is prolific in her productions. Although she started out with cheap theater costumes, her reputation, and close friendship with the Editor-in-Chief of Vogue Italia, Franca Sozzani, has allowed Beecroft to increase her costume budget. Famous makeup artist Pat McGrath has worked with her on occasion, and fashion gods such as Miuccia Prada, Tom Ford, Helmut Lang, Dolce & Gabbana, and Manolo Blahnik, have all lent designs to Beecroft's work. 

It was common in Beecroft's earlier work to gather more than a handful of models to stand in a group wearing nothing but high heels. Lurve Magazine looks into her use of high heels, what she calls "pedestals," and what they mean in her work. She explains that she uses heels as a way to keep the models grounded without actually being naturally on the ground. As a result, the models are not in the natural state of nudity; the women are, as Beecroft says, in "uniform."

By making her models wear heels and calling them pedestals Beecroft, highlights the impact that fashion and the representation of femininity has had on women in both public and private spheres. At the same time, she makes nude women stand in heels for hours on end while onlookers gaze at them.

In an interview with Museo Magazine, Beecroft discussed the extent that Pier Paolo Pasolini, an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual who was alive from 1922 till 1975, inspired her works. Beecroft states in the interview that Pasolini's work "demystifies history, religion, and class without sarcasm or criticism; it humanizes what is usually presented to us as inhuman. There is empathy in his work, sometimes paternalism." This second sentence is especially interesting considering that Beecroft is often criticized for lacking empathy and being insensitive.

Since Beecroft's performances tend to be large scale, her choice of venue has to suit the production that she puts on. For example, her VB48 performance, which played heavily upon themes of nudity, religion, and the balance between dark and light, took place in Palazzo Ducale in Genoa. The palace's dramatic space and chiaroscuro lighting that reflect Baroque and Renaissance paintings only emphasized the aesthetics and mood of the work.

Beecroft's work is often labeled performance art because it usually consists of staged, live events, but sometimes her work is only exhibited after it has been recorded via film and photography, moving it into different categories. For example, for her "performance" VB66 in Napoli, Beecroft photographed painted models. Unlike in her live pieces, the photographs were the final product.

Maybe one of the most notable (and controversial) stories associated with Beecroft, is when she decided to adopt two babies in southern Sudan when she visited an orphanage. They were a pair of malnourished twins, and she offered each a breast, swollen with milk because she had just left her own child in New York. One of her most well known pieces of art includes her double breast-feeding the twins. The work stirred up a lot of criticism, aimed at the artist for exploiting and exoticizing the children to trump up her celebrity in the art world.

Pietra Brettkelly created a film on this event in Beecroft's life called The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins, which opened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008. According to New York Magazine, "The doc cluster-bombs her faddish fascination with Sudanese orphans and paints Beecroft as a hypocritically self-aware, colossally colonial pomo narcissist," voicing the opinion of many of Beecroft's critics. 

Kanye West most recently collaborated with Beecroft to put on a performance at Mana Wynwood for Art Basel Miami Beach last night. While he did not make an appearance (he was at a design conversation moderated by Hans Ulrich Obrist later in the evening), the performance included Beecroft's nude models covered in clay standing next to small clay heads.

Recently Beecroft was/is the art director and choreographer for the Yeezus tour. Before that, Beecroft helped Kanye host a private listening party for his fourth album, 808s and Heartbreak, and was the art director for Kanye's short film, Runaway.