Renek Gaszewski [Blog]

Vanessa Beecroft persuades women to pose naked in public. Is it challenging art or merely soft porn for intellectuals? Luke Harding caught up with her latest show in Berlin.
Her critics accuse her of exploiting women. Her fans praise her as a bold and daring feminist. Either way, the queues to see Vanessa Beecroft’s latest work in Berlin were extremely long - hardly surprising, one suspects, given that the art on offer involved 100 naked women.
The performance was the biggest ever staged by Beecroft, a 35-year-old New York-based conceptual artist who has been staging nude tableaux vivants since 1993. Gradually, they have attracted increasing attention, to the point where a Beecroft performance is now a major international arts event. She has sometimes dressed her naked models in high heels and garish red, yellow or platinum wigs. At the preview of her latest show, Beecroft said that she had tried this time to keep her models as “natural” as possible. For her latest performance, entitled “VB55″ and staged in Berlin’s New National Gallery, the women were wearing see-through tights. What, though, was it all about? And did the show - introduced by two German professors - amount to anything more than soft porn for intellectuals?
“I want the women to be slightly hypnotised, so they appear removed and detached from the audience,” she says. “It’s not a concept that can be easily explained. I would say it includes embarrassment, shame, violence and abuse. There is a feeling of embarrassment, no matter if the viewer is a man or a woman.” Is she embarrassed by her own performances, then? “Yes, I am.”
Certainly, there is plenty about Beecroft’s work that is voyeuristic. But the most interesting aspect is almost its cold and calculating cruelty: the public performance lasted for three long hours. Apart from the odd stretch and yawn, the women are instructed to remain as still and silent as possible. They are warned not to “act sexy“. Towards the end they can lie on the floor. At the preview, attended by dozens of journalists and TV crews, several of the “girls“, as Beecroft calls them, sat down exhausted. Most looked distinctly bored.
For VB55, ordinary women aged 18 to 65 were chosen, rather than professional models; the artist also used more women than ever before. Their hair colours - red, yellow and black - were picked to allude to Germany’s flag.
“I didn’t mind being naked. After a while you don’t even notice. The problem is that nobody told us how to look,” one 27-year-old volunteer, Nina Petereit, grumbled afterwards. “The artist gave us no direction. I didn’t find it very structured.” She added: “It was also really cold and the vegetarian food they gave us was awful.”
Prior to being sent out to stand naked before the public, the women were rubbed in almond oil, the rather bizarre result being to give them shiny breasts. “I consider my performances to be one body of work stored in different parts of the world,” Beecroft explains. “It’s almost like an experiment in directing, in an almost brutal and violent way, women in front of an audience … There are references to paintings, images, movies and texts.”
Not everyone shares her high opinion of her work, however. One critic said that there was nothing wrong with women taking all their clothes off, but that in Beecroft’s case the result was “trivial”, “cliched” and “unchallenging”. Others, though, detect hidden influences from classical painting - Rembrandt, Holbein, Della Francesca, have all been mentioned - as well as Renaissance sculpture and European cinema. (Beecroft says she is a keen admirer of Helmut Newton and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.) Each of her shows is exhaustively videoed, with photographers allowed to take close-up shots, a practice that verges on the creepy. Dealers then flog the results. The performances are titled in strict mathematical sequence after the artist’s initials (VB01, VB02, VB25, VB55 etc).
Beecroft, a petite figure in a buttoned-up raincoat, made no mention of her long struggle with bulimia - one factor, surely, in her almost callous use of female nudity. The daughter of an Italian mother and British father, she has had an obsessive relationship with food since her early teens. She has admitted to crash-dieting with amphetamines, taking anti-depressives, smoking to keep her weight down, and exercising compulsively. Her first show in 1993 was based on her Book of Food - a diary she kept between 1983 and 1993 detailing everything she had ever eaten. The diary was placed in the middle of a Milan art gallery; Beecroft then directed 30 women, most of them fellow art students dressed in her own clothes, to move around it. This first “performance” became the template for future shows. Over time, an element of nudity crept in, to the point where a Beecroft performance would now seem inconceivable without it. As her reputation grew, fashion designers such as Miuccia Prada, Helmut Lang and Dolce & Gabbana began providing her with clothes.
These days, Beecroft doesn’t strip off herself and join her models; she did, however, recently pose naked at her rural home in Long Island, which she shares with her husband Greg Durkin, 28, and their sons, Dean and Virgil.
Whether her work is any good or not, though, there is no doubt that Beecroft’s latest venue was well chosen. The modernist New National Gallery or Neue Nationalgalerie was designed by Mies van der Rohe, and is one of Berlin’s most prestigious buildings. It is completely transparent - allowing passers-by to stare at a lot of naked flesh. Indeed, a group of Italian schoolchildren gawped dumbfounded through the glass after turning up at the preview by accident.

Bridport has a long tradition of art. In recent years it’s become an established centre for life drawing where artists both professional and amateur can turn up and draw a nude model.
Emma Chance is a brave soul. Baring all to a group of strangers, she stays motionless for long periods of time so they can draw her from every conceivable angle.
Rather than being embarrassed or uncomfortable Emma is happy to pose because she herself is an artist who has drawn nude models.
She said, “It’s fine because I’ve been on the other side and I’ve done the drawing and I’m used to it. The first initial taking off your dressing gown can sometimes be a bit intimidating but you just get used to it. Everyone’s professional so it just feels comfortable.”
Emma was modelling at a series of life-drawing sessions where artists of all abilities can turn up at Bridport Arts Centre and draw a live model.
Looking not drawing
Among them was Suna Morrisey from Bridport who declared that “there’s no other way to learn how to draw.” She said, “You learn more about juxtaposition of parts the body and it teaches you to really look, which you’re actually doing, you’re not drawing you’re looking.”
The sessions are run by Abbotsbury based artist John Meaker who fears that life drawing is a dying art and feels strongly that the skill should be kept alive especially as many art schools appear to be giving it up.
He said, “There’s nowhere else where you’re going to get disciplined drawing apart from in the life room really of that kind of intensity of analytical involvement of what you’re looking at.”
The sessions attract all sorts of artists from professionals and amateurs to degree and A level students who need to expand their portfolios. They’re particularly popular because there aren’t many opportunities to paint a nude model partly because there aren’t many people prepared to do it.
Physically demanding
That might explain why many of the models John recruits for his life sessions are artists themselves. Thea Martin from Bridport is a regular at the sessions but only turned to art after a stint as a model. She started modelling to find out what it was like to pose, because she wanted to write a feature about it.
Having plucked up the courage to do it once, she found this was a good way of supplementing her income even though at times it’s hard to stay so still. She said, “It’s the long poses when you start really feeling the pain of being really still.”
John Meaker tends to choose younger models simply because the artists prefer it that way and because it’s quite physically demanding.
He said, “I’m afraid I may look prejudiced but I like to have a model that looks like a classical figure, and most important for that is agility. Not necessarily youth but health.”
Bridport’s artistic tradition dates back to the 19th Century when a thriving arts school was established. The painter and designer Charles Rennie Macintosh came to the town to draw and teach.
Today the town is host to a huge range of professional and amateur artists which is perhaps why the life drawing sessions are so popular and may be why in Bridport at least it isn’t that hard to find individuals who are prepared to bare all for art.

Sitting naked in a room full of people staring at you is not the sort of job usually advertised, but that’s just what is on offer in Newport.
And unless people come forward for the work, council-run art classes in the city could close.
An appeal has been made after a pool of 12 nude models for life drawing classes has slowly reduced to two.
Models can earn £7.65 an hour for their time and unless more are found three classes are likely to stop running.
Artist Alison Ludlow and her brother Jonathan Sherwood run the classes for Newport Council.
“I’ve got two models for my classes but my brother has no-one and it’s getting to the stage where the classes could be closed,” said Ms Ludlow.
“We desperately need more models to come forward to save the classes.
“The students absolutely love it and the models we do use seem to love it too.
“The students are always asking when we are having the next model but at the moment we are really struggling.”
She said life drawing was an important part of mastering how to draw.
“Life drawing is a fundamental part of art - once you’ve mastered that, you’ve got everything. It’s a very difficult thing to do but the students really enjoy it,” she said.
“They don’t look at the model as a naked person, they look at them in terms of shapes and forms.
“I think the hardest thing for the model would be the first time they take their dressing gown off because the students are used to it and even the students who’ve never done it before are concentrating on getting their drawing right.”
And her plea for more models to come forward is being supported by Glyn Mitchell who regularly sits for life drawing classes.
The 43-year-old from Newport took up the challenge after seeing a poster at the centre where he was learning English.
“I just thought to myself, why not, I’ll give that a go - it’s something I can do so I’ll give it a try,” he said.
“I’ve never done anything like it before but I have to say the first time wasn’t so bad.
“I didn’t know the artists which helped because if I had seen a face I recognised then I don’t think I’d have done it.
“I find it relaxing and calming although it can be hard work sitting in one place - if you have an itchy nose or something, you have to put it out of your mind.
“It is a great way of meeting people and making friends - the artists are always so pleased to see a new model.
“It would be such a pity if the classes had to close.
“I’m 43, have had neurological problems and am no Sylvester Stallone so if I can do it anyone can.”

Sculptor Antony Gormley will use 240 models for a nude sitting for his next exhibition in Britain.
The models will be wrapped in clingfilm and then have plastercasts made of their bodies, which will be turned into sculptures for Gateshead’s Baltic Art Centre.
Audition for the castings will be held at the gallery later this month.
The casts will then be turned into moulds and used to make dozens of sculpted figures made with stainless steel rods.
The sculptures will cover a 880 square-metre level and the exhibition starts on 17 May and ends on 25 August.
Gormley, who is best known for his Angel Of The North sculpture above Gateshead, and for the terracotta installation Field For The British Isles, recently at the British Museum in London.
The new exhibition will be called Domain Field, and will cost about £400,000.
The nude casting will be done at the gallery during public opening hours.
The castings will be done in stages, with separate sessions for the torso, legs and head.
The casting will take between two and four hours to complete.
More tha 70 people have so far taken application forms for the casting.
The forms ask applicants to give details of their height and weight.
Trial castings took place before Christmas and included some of the Baltic’s staff.
A spokeswoman for the centre said the sculptures would be made on site, as the Baltic regarded itself as an “art factory“.
‘Spiritual experience’
The public will be able to watch the metal figures’ bodyparts being welded together - though the nude casting sessions will be private.
“People are doing it for the love of it. Antony sees it as a spiritual experience it, almost like a rebirth,” she said.
“Most people so far have loved the experience. They’ve felt revitalised by it.”
Those taking part in the trial casting were asked to adopt a relaxed pose, and the spokeswoman said it had resulted in some strange poses.
“It’s going to be great for them to wander around and recognise themselves.”
The exhibition’s press day, meanwhile, will be attended by art critic Brian Sewell, who last week complained too much top quality art was being show outside of London and missing the capital.
Art lovers in Newcastle have invited Sewell up and, it is believed, want to take the London-loving critic around their city to show the north’s cultural heritage.

Prostitution becoming more available.
Prostitutes do not have to look for customers on the street, because people find the service through internet chats. The modern method of payment is: a picture or even savory offering sex in exchange for your mobile phone charger.
Hundreds of offers to send the spicy photos in exchange for a charge account can be found at the ambush. That suit went to a newspaper journalist, who contacted the resident and Braniewo and Sejny offering sexual services on the network. “They told me that it is professionally prepared for that. I like to play in these pictures, or other toys and banane” - writes the journalist.
The cost of credit is not great. With the package of 70 photos is enough to pay 5-10 zlotys. Newspaper discloses, however, that some of the money paid out for the girls offer to meet the personal and real sex. The proposal falls after a few sentences of the chat.