Vanessa Beecroft (Genoa, Italy, 1969) is an Italian contemporary artist living in New York. Location within Italy Christopher Columbus monument in Piazza Aquaverde Genoa (Italian Genova, Genoese Zena, French Gênes, German Genua, Spanish Génova,Galician Xénova) is a city and a seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria. ... 1969 (MCMLXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday For other uses, see Number 1969. ... The term contemporary art generally refers to art being done now. ... Official language(s) None, English de facto Capital Albany Largest city New York City Area  - Total  - Width  - Length  - % water  - Latitude  - Longitude Ranked 27th 141,205 km² 455 km 530 km 13. ...

Beecroft uses a unique, personal, artistic language, working in the gap between art and life. Her work is an complex fusion of conceptual issues and aesthetic concerns. She has focused on large-scale performance art, usually involving live female models. In connection with her performances, video recordings and photographs are made, to be exhibited as documentation of the performances, but also as separate works of art. The work and her conceptual approach is neither performance nor documentary, but something in between, and closer to painting. Beecroft is making contemporary versions of the complex figurative compositions that have challenged painters from the Renaissance onwards. She sets up a structure for the participants in her live events to create their own ephemeral composition, presenting themselves according to their own internalized aesthetic system. The performances are existential encounters between models and audience, their shame and their expectations. Each performance is made for a specific location and often references the political, historical, or social associations of the place where it is held. Beecroft’s first exhibition was VB01, in Milan, 1993. An extremely intimate show, she presented a series of drawings along with the past eight years of her Food Diary. The following year she exhibited in New York for her first time, at the Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York. Later in 1994, VB08 took place at P.S.1 in Long Island City, NY.

More recently, in VB39, 1999 and in VB42, 2000 the artist explored the possibilities of fully male performances with the U.S. Navy in San Diego, CA and with the U.S. Silent Service at the Intrepid in New York, respectively.

Beecroft's performances have taken place at many notable art institutions: VB28 at the Venice Biennale in 1997; VB35 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York in 1998; VB40 at the MCA, Sydney, Australia in 1999; VB43 at the Gagosian Gallery in London in 2000; VB45 at the Vienna Kunsthalle in 2001; VB50 at the Sao Paulo Bienal, Brazil in 2002; VB52, part of a retrospective show, at the Castello di Rivoli in 2003; VB54 at Terminal 5 of JFK Airport New York in 2004, a performance banned by the authorities.

VB55, a recent example, featured one hundred women standing still in Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie for three hours, each woman oiled from the waist up and wearing nothing but a pair of pantyhose. It was staged in April 2005.

External links

• Artist's website
• Vanessa Beecroft at Cosmic Galerie
• Vanessa Beecroft at Deitch Projects
• VB55 in Berlin
• Vanessa Beecroft at designboom.com
• Review of VB55 by The Guardian
• Vanessa Beecroft at Gagosian Gallery
• Vanessa Beecroft- Classic Cruelty