VB65.

Nicole Moserle

Vanessa Beecroft, Italian-English super star artist, presented her last work in Milan on
Monday 16 March 2009: VB65, which has been especially realized for PAC (Contemporary Art
Pavilion).

As with her previous works, Beecroft staged a radical performance that had a strong political
connotation, leaving no doubts on her intentions. Once again, the drama of immigration is
investigated. For the second time after VB39, US Navy Seals, Beecroft was directing a male
models performance, instead of nude women as we got used to in the past: twenty-two
African immigrants formally dressed up, who weren’t looking that normal because their
clothes were old, creased, oversized and shoes were not included. This unusual group of
people was seated by one side of a twelve meters long table made of transparent glass as in
a post-modern last supper, staring the empty space in silence, eating meat and black bread
without any tableware nor tablecloth, facing an “uninvited” public of guests.

The visitors to the exhibition are forced to play the role of the guest. The smell is intense.
Nobody feels hungry and there is some kind of misplacement sensation. We all should be on
the other side of the table, the immigrants fantasizing about our abundance of food and
dreaming of sharing the banquet with us. As Beecroft explains her work: <<To see these
people in this way destabilizes our canonic image of them, so we can perceive their essence,
their psychology without any cultural filter. Many of these migrants are intellectuals, doctors,
they have a cultural dignity>>1.

Almost at the end of the three hours long performance, something more happened. While the
artist was chatting with some friends and experts, two young guys from the audience
sneaked in the performance area, breaking the silence and the tension between the viewers
and the stage. A blond young woman, elegantly dressed in blue, took a seat next to a
performer with no hesitation. Her face was painted in black and she looked spontaneous
smacking a gum on her high-heels. The “movement-action”, that lasted for just about a
couple minutes was documented by a photographer, making people thinking it was part of VB
show.

At the end of the evening, people were leaving without any solution, but with new questions
to answer. What happened? Was a new relationship between ethics and aesthetics
established?

Charles Dennis, co-founder of the historic Performance Space 122 in New York, has said:
<<Performance Art is everything that is carried out live, with the presence of the public, and
what makes it so interesting is the fact that it is always a challenge>>2.

During the revolutionary 60s, artists were frequently making use of their own bodies in their
practice, being them the subject matter or functioning as the support for their art. The high


 1

VB65. Nicole Moserle

social pressure on politics – with its visual power on the media – and the radical intellectual
debate of those years pushed the boundaries of knowledge with strong emphasis,
anticipating and commenting the changes of the social system. It is interesting to note that in
this cultural milieu the art viewers were playing an active role in the collective production of
meaning, participating to its fertile dissemination.3

As in VB65, we clearly see that the presence of the public is fundamental for the work of art
to be. At the beginning of her career, Beecroft herself declared that she <<wanted the
audience to react on a psychological level, since the artwork is not complete until its viewers
become part of it>>4. Working with live performances and with the presence and reactions of
the spectators doesn’t necessarily imply that artists will present their own bodies. Beecroft
belongs to a new generation of artists that work with actors, directing them – with strict rules
like in VB65 case – and carefully staging a show without taking part in it. If we compare this
kind of performance art with the works of Vito Acconci or Marina Abramoviç – who were
pushing their own bodies to the limits of the sensorial experience – we clearly see that the
role of the artist has completely changed, even though the live aspect and the presence of
the public are still fundamental 5.

Referring to the visual meaning, to the aesthetic of VB65, it has to be mentioned the specific
context where the performance took place. The action of eating, that is so common to result
even banal, gains a special meaning in Milan, the city of Leonardo, that hosts one his
masterpieces: “The Last Supper”. The parallel that can be traced with one of the most
important works in the history of art is evident – and suggested by Beecroft herself – as the
performers are all facing the same frontal direction and the mixed man sitting at the center
stands out among the others. Like Andy Warhol did in his last completed paintings series –
“The Last Supper” exhibited in Milan in 1987 – Beecroft is playing with the visual materials of
the art history, reinterpreting the religious iconography with her colored Jesus that is smoking
during the show. The visual reference has lost its religious implications in the post-modern
celebration of the ever-present. The meaning flows freely from the signifier, and what really
matter in this work are the little gestures of the protagonists, the invisible relationship
between them and the public implied in their performing. Therefore, the artwork experience
is no more limited to the surface of the canvas, yet expanded to the everyday collective
dynamics: the immigration issue and all its social implication.6 These topics are the final of
point of the artist’s production, who previously dealt with other aspects of western
contemporary culture, such as people’s relationship with food and sex. Beecroft, who was
raised in all-women family without any strong cultural link to a specific nationality, has finally
resolved her inner conflicts, successfully becoming a new spokeswoman for world social
inequality. This artistic and personal change happened after she gave birth to a child and


 2

VB65. Nicole Moserle

identified herself with the problems of a third world country – Sudan – that helped her to
face her limits and see further.7

If it is true the art has lost its aura in the age of mechanical reproduction, we also have to
stress the fact that performances are meant to exit in a specific context, hic et nunc as
Walter Benjamin said about classical art, and at the same time through their mechanical
recording. Therefore the trade off between the moment the artwork fully express itself and
its historical memory is resolved and harmonized in the performance, which is given eternal
life in its video and image recordings. These, as the peculiar products of the century that just
passed, stand as the most plausible candidates to be considered technical and artistic means,
trough which comprehend the destiny of a whole era.8

Finally, what about those two persons that eluded the rules and step on the stage to perform
together the real actors? What did they mean with their behavior? Were they criticizing the
rigid aesthetic used by Beecroft in dealing with a very present social issue?

<<We have to let the “reality” of the work of art comes to meet us, it can’t be summoned
up, much less procured. It is already happen. In that which our sight, hearing and touch
bring to us, in the sensation of the chromatic, the roughness, the hardness, “reality” literally
crushes into us. It is what in the senses of the sensitiveness is perceived through the
sensations >>.9


























































1
The artist answering to my question about who were those men in the real life.
2
Viviana Bucarelli, Performance come una Sfida (Performance as a Challenge), Flash Art (Italian
Edition), No. 269, 2008.
3
Dick Higgings, Horizons. The poetics and Theory of the Intermedia, Sothern Illinois University Press,
Reprint edition, 1984..
4
Giacinto di Pietrantonio, Vanessa Beecroft. Grow Fond of the Perception, Flash Art (Italian Edition),
No. 184, Milano, 1994.
5
H. Foster, R. Krauss, Y.A. Bois, B. H. D. Buchloh, Arte dal 1900. Modernismo, Antimodernismo,
Postmodernismo (Art since 1900. Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernis), Zanichelli, Milano, 2006.
6
Jennifer Allen, Readymade Women, MOUSSE Contemporay Art Magazine No.16, Milano/NYC, 2009.
7
Helena Kontova, Marina Abramoviç, Vanessa Beecroft, Shirin Nashat. Nomadi Moderne (Modern
Nomads), Flash Art (Italian Edition), No. 264, Milano, 2007.
8
Jacques Rancière, The politics of Aesthetics, Continuum, London, 2006.
9
Martin Heidegger, L’origine dell’opra d’arte (The Origin of the Work of Art), Marinotti, Milano, 2000.


 3