Sunday, November 13, 2011

Vanessa Beecroft---Obsession with Body

I read an article about Vanessa Beecroft, an Italian artist born in 1969.
   She's apparently obsessed with her body, kept a daily journal for a few years recording what she ate and how she felt. Her performances consist of a bunch of women of a certain body type- usually thin, tall, pale- occupying rooms to make the viewer feel uncomfortable and consider their psychological response to the situation.
 I don't know if it's her art that I don't like or the way the author of the article wrote about her art, or both. He wrote: "As in the diary and drawings, the reader/observer is not invited to participate; he must only become aware, through sight, of a suspended posture and indeterminate gesture that slowly indulges him and stimulates him to participate emotionally." Does that mean the art is boring and cryptic?

 Sure, the work can be said to be a commentary on voyeurism and objectification of women and ideals about what women should look like in our culture today, but what else? That seems to be it. And she does it over and over and over every year with a few changes here and there. It seems more like craft than art to me because she has found one thing she likes to make and just makes it over and over again changing the color, size, location and other little details now and then. It's like when a painter makes a series of the same painting, "playing with" a technique or composition. boring if that's all there is to it.

 But one photo from her site reminded me of the Chromatic Diet that Calle did, which is inspiring to me--the idea of eating according to color.
 
Calle's Chromatic Diet from her book Double Game

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