This is the first book to focus on the controversial performances staged by Vanessa Beecroft, whose work inhabits a realm where the lines between fashion, performance art, voyeurism, and feminist commentary blur. Using live female models as her medium, Beecroft loosely choreographs them to pose in often little more than wigs and pantyhose. The effect is threefold: unambiguous send-up of fashion culture, surreal theatre piece, and deliberate attempt to bring into relief questions of female representation. Already well-known ...
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This is the first book to focus on the controversial performances staged by Vanessa Beecroft, whose work inhabits a realm where the lines between fashion, performance art, voyeurism, and feminist commentary blur. Using live female models as her medium, Beecroft loosely choreographs them to pose in often little more than wigs and pantyhose. The effect is threefold: unambiguous send-up of fashion culture, surreal theatre piece, and deliberate attempt to bring into relief questions of female representation. Already well-known in the art world, despite her young age (she was born in 1969), Beecroft's successful staging of one of her pieces last spring in the Guggenheim Museum became a minor sensation, making the cover of ArtForum and bringing to mind the happenings that Yayoi Kusama presented in the 1960s. As Collier Schorr noted, "Beecroft is interested in the aesthetics of how women look when they are looked at, and her body-conscious projects encourage alienation between model, artist, and audience." This book features photographs from most of Beecroft's documented spectacles, which have been staged internationally.
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