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VB40: The Effects of Rules in Aesthetics

Performance
Vanessa Beecroft
Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney
August 2-5, 1999

Using models that stood motionless in the middle of the gallery for the duration of the performance VB40 - reminded us of how mesmerizing the surface/the veneer of things can be. How undeniable the strong magnetic pull of beautiful bodies and beautiful faces will always be - short circuiting thinking in many instances.

Though structured as a fashion shoot, in a performance event a different set of sign-systems and values comes to play. While much of fashion is about layers of veneer and thus can be taken purely as an aesthetic experience if one wishes - in the framework of an art project the luggage of socio-historical and theoretical frameworks insists that one reads the work through a different prism. No matter that it walks and talks like fashion, we are forced to step back and reflect beyond the surface - whether it is in fact a parody, a critique or something else entirely.

The representation of women in the arts and popular culture, especially when nudity is involved will perhaps always be problematic. Is it exploitation? Is it eye candy? And in the case of women consciously participating in the deed - is it an appeal to a gendered gaze? Many marginalized groups of course have reclaimed what was in the past states of oppression - reinscribing new meaning to previous politics of (in this instance female) representation. For example these days when we hear the word ‘queer’ we either think of news footage from the 80s with ACT-UP protesters chanting “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re fabulous get used to it”, or more recently the TV-shows ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy‘ or ‘Queer as Folks‘ - a word of identification, celebration and pride - as opposed to the insult it used to be.

an army of me

In an interview about the work Beecroft calls her models an ‘army that empowers women’ and refers to her instructions to them as ‘rules’. She says that ‘the true beauty of women has never been reflected in art or fashion (an overstatement perhaps), implying that she aims for greater accuracy by presenting the real thing in the highly artificial, structured form of a performance event at a major public gallery. She claims indifference to the presence of men in the audience. “Men - they can look. I don’t mind.” Reading up on her past works provide some interesting clues. In her first exhibition Despair she showed a group of drawings and a diary she has been keeping for some eight years before the show. The diary - containing obsessive daily records of her eating habits, guilty feelings and psychiatric visits as someone who suffered from an eating disorder. By restricting the models movements and appearance, perhaps Beecroft in some ways was trying to reenact the societal pressure on women to look and behave after a certain ..fashion. VB - in the VB40 - can be anything but I am guessing its V- for Vanessa and B- for Beecroft - a self-portrait in the format of a performance event. The women she used were of a very specific type - the type of women fashion houses and fashion magazines often use. The the work in its presentation however seem largely mute of obvious authorial intent -  and thus seem to just subserviently accept the rules and conventions imposed rather than provide an alternative. There doesnt seem to be a sense of rebellion or critique, only a placid acceptance. Art aside - perhaps a failed interjection into personal obsession through an artwork is better than literally dying from an obsession - as eating disorders have the highest mortality rates of any mental illness.*

different but the same - its a lot of legs

On the other hand because the models were mannequin-like, disengaged and motionless it  gave one a sense of what writers mean when they speak of a certain Warholian emptiness - cool, detached and superficial and for that very reason even more mysterious, fascinating. The use of repetition and variation was also intriguing. The models themselves looked very similar to each other - reasonably tall, with soft curves and brown Botticelli like curls. All were dressed in fire-truck stockings with matching Prada shoes, topless except for skin coloured bras. Apparently the same performance has been performed the same way since its inception in 1994. The drill being - 15 to 20 females are handpicked by Beecroft and arranged to be stared at for the duration of the piece - while they in turn stare into empty space, remaining speechless and indifferent. Only occasionally stretching and moving around. The paradox of trying to repeat oneself over and over of course is that it is always a near miss - close but never the same. Different sets of models participate, the city is different (somewhere in Europe…somewhere in the United States…) the gallery is different - but essentially whether here or there a flattening out of context in each place/space occurs…a much of muchness - a somewhere nowhere… Fashion is an extremely strong social force. It dictates many social practices, tastes and conventions. To map one’s personal identity and values onto ones physical appearance seems simplistic, and yet its a widespread cultural practice. Like Beecroft’s work however, fashion is a case of the never ending near miss - a constant chase for the elusive.  What is ‘the effects of rules on aesthetics’?. I suppose what the effects of rules have on most things is a certain homegenization. Models that look alike, a work that from city to city remains essentially the same. But most importantly a homegenisation which excludes. Another effect of being mesmerised and awed by the beautiful faces and bodies was a shutting down of one’s ability to critically think. What the Polish experimental director Jerzy Grotowski once called ‘the beautiful lie’. Meaning style over substance, packaging over content, which is one of our contemporary dilemmas.

fab-abs

There was one model however who broke the pattern of repetition - a muscular blonde completely nude except for her high heels - who paradoxically didn’t seem nude at all, but in fact seemed armoured by her nudity.

VB40: The Affects of Rules in Aesthetics
1999/2007

*National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders United States

This post is tagged Add new tag, Contemporary Art, MCA, Nudity, Performance Art, Relational Aesthetics, Vanessa Beecroft, VB40