Beecrofts

But now and again we also get the impression of looking at paintings, and then again they appear to be dream figures. Images which have stepped out of the contours of her own form, briefly coming to life for as long as the performance lasts. For a moment they are just things you might call Beecrofts. We have heard of this before, human types bearing the name of the artist who portrayed them first. Picasso-faces, Hitchcock-women, Modigliani-figures, Giacometti-silhouettes. And so now Beecroft-figures-in-movement. They are just irresistible.

Mediamatic Supermarket showed two pieces, The Silent Service (VB42) and Venice (VB47), from New Yorker Vanessa Beecroft’s steadily growing repertoire. She is not completely unknown in Amsterdam for she gave a performance in gallery Aschenbach already in 1993 (see the catalogue The Chalk-white Child), edited by A Haselhoef, I. Willems, and Paul Groot, 1993). Venice is a surrealistic variation with a performance of naked girls in the Guggenheim Foundation in Venice, and is in keeping with moods reminiscent of the work of Giorgo de Chirico. The Silent Service portrays a line-up of marines on a museum warship in San Diego harbour.

Here, Beecroft has combined filmic, artistic and everyday experiences in an atmosphere as delicate as it is superior. Equally fragile as they are challenging are the performance on the aircraft carrier (in the evening where the crew in formation are lined up as if briefly caressed by the wind), and the one in Venice (where the performers – girls ‘without faces’ – are arranged as still as shop dummies, bent into a few basic positions as if by an invisible hand). We all occasionally dream of statues coming to life, but here we see the opposite, people who become statues, a rarer variation. More ysterious, frightening too, something that the biblical figure of Lot who turned into a pillar of salt may bear witness to.

In spite of the fact that Beecroft films her performances in broad cut, both films are characterised by a view operating within an artistic framework with, historically, a vivid past: Raphael’s cardinals devising their nefarious plans, Jan van Eyck’s Flemish priests, Rembrandt’s self-portraits, all may be traced here.

Venice (VB47)

Venice tells the story of a performance of faceless girls. Figures that reveal themselves in their almost unprotected physicality, are seen without they themselves looking back. They can look through their mask, but remain faceless to the onlooker. They are not blind, but they perform with a countenance hidden behind a graceful, egg-shaped helmet. The Greek goddess Athena was born with a helmet on, these girls suggest something of that secrecy. The faces are like mannequins on a De Chirico canvas, like egg shells. The bodies of the young, naked maidens wear an unmistakable badge: preferably stand still and move as you do in this day and age. They are grouped together in a little hall in the Guggenheim Foundation in Venice, with world class paintings on the wall, and windows with beautiful, classic window panes. Young girls, clearly rather insecure in their nakedness, but gradually you see them assume a rather more relaxed attitude, stretch their legs, evidently because they are not used to the high heels they wear. They stand in formation, sit down one after another on the marble floor.

Perhaps the secret of Beecroft’s work is mainly that which we don’t see. The girls are nude, smooth shaven, and look like each other. That challenges, fascinates and keeps our gaze excited. But at the same time, we dream of the moments that the faces hidden by their masks from our eyes, come to life, put on their clothes again and change from anonymous figures into living girls. Perhaps we imagine their giggling before and after the performances.

Has Beecroft’s work ever been linked with pornography? In any case a view of her work is not secure against scabrous thoughts. But at the same time it is as if in her view all passion, desire and ardour are neutralised here into, yes, into art. As if the girls are on neutral territory, and the onlooker just as the gamesters are forced into submission, to a neutral dispassionate submission.

However that may be, viewed artistically this is an unparalleled ‘warehouse’ of movements and behaviours on a square millimetre, that floors you as a viewer. Like a museum room with statues of, be generous, Giacometti, a Brancusi, with portraits of Bronzino and Rafael on the wall, bedecked with an anonymity that has only really become an artistic motive since De Chirico.

This celebration is best approached with the thought of a collection of Greek statues, or by an attic with casts of those statues for academic students, somewhere in the nineteenth century. A nightmare, or a really quite heavenly dream: all the statues come slowly and sluggishly to life, as if the girls have been sedated by a collective drug.

At a certain moment they are all sitting with their legs folded, stretched out, apart or together on the ground, hands resting on the floor. The heads occasionally go back and forth, they look at us, see us, we cannot see them. Languorous maidens matching the skin toned marble floor beautifully.

Shop dummies sitting wonderfully, one supporting her head on her hand, a fantastic image, uncommonly fragile. This is more than sculpture, this is first class dance. And look at that girl with her back towards us. As if Ingres’ Odalisque has come to life again!

One of the most beautiful moments is perhaps when a group of girls during the second part of the film move to a room with Jackson Pollock paintings on the wall. Anyone who has seen Ed Harris’ film about the painter, who died in a car accident at the age of 44, will not be able to look at this without tears. How Pollock would have enjoyed this scene if he had had a chance of ever seeing it! Five gorgeous girls on a leather sofa admiring several canvasses painted by him. That is so surrealistic: a work of art looking at art, quite bizarre! If Pollock had been able to look at this picture in real life, I am willing to bet that he would have been completely stunned.

Too good to be true!

The silent service (VB42)

The story is simple: a group of marines in full uniform drawn up on an aircraft carrier in San Diego harbour. Beecroft positions herself as a high-ranking guest who proclaims herself and inspects the troops. The eye goes back and forth, the men and women initially stand as if petrified, only the wind causes clothing to move. And then further details, the faces of sternly gazing men and women, with eyelids that blink often, who are conscious that they are becoming art or a part of Hollywood through this registration, The crew slowly thaw, the men and women are more vulnerable than you at first thought, they quickly become a little familiar. The wind attempts to pull it all out of balance by playing a game with the military decorations. Then the crew move back and forth too.

When they perform there they look stern, they behave toughly, but we gradually see through them very well. Under Vanessa Beecroft’s direction the marines move as if in a production never previously seen, not a tattoo, not a parade, not a film, and in spite of suggestion not a painting or sculpture either. Their precision and rigorousness is transparent here, their effectiveness primarily acted. But make no mistake: Milosevic and Sadam Hussein know better. If these boys and men are allowed free rein, they sow death and destruction for their noble cause.

A few facts on the performance which lasts about 25 minutes:

00.15 panoramic overview of the city of San Diego, slowly zooming in on the ship.

00.10 view above the crew, lined up in rows, clad in ceremonial dress, around twenty eight crew, two officers and the captain, arranged hierarchically, leader above leader.

03.10 the captain in the picture

03.25 at a slant above the crew, the camera moves over them, they arouse the impression of fossils of the human kind, still and immovable.

04.05 a dolly shot from right to left over the ship alongside the group, then back from left to right. Black uniforms, white berets, a little like variations on the spinach gulping Popeye, the sailor man. Camera moves back and forth again, attention to the military decorations on chest and arms: for heroic behaviour in the barracks or in flash-points throughout the world? How much blood is attached to those decorations?

06.10 many soldiers wear glasses: indifferent, tough, belligerent, but also a lot of insecurity, as if questions on morality might well lurk behind that rigid attitude.

07.27 indifferent, tearful, tough, stupid, moustaches too, an empty gaze as only soldiers can have.

08.17 looks like a fashion show, blinking eyes, many blinking eyes, but what does that say? Blue eyes, red eyes, brown eyes.

09.17 hands behind backs, young boys and experienced people, many clichés, but also unexpected splendours.

09.58 picture from the side, the wind gets a hold of the people. What do all those stripes on the chest and the red hooks on the sleeves mean actually? Behind them large text on banner: beware of…, yes beware of what?

11.20 how proud they are of their stripes, ribbons and other paraphernalia. The stripes on the lower arm too.

12.06 girls are in the minority, but now a boy pictured between two girls.

12.41 how do you stick it out in such a closed community where the decorations, stripes and other blazons evidently set the tone?

13.27 a marine acts as if he is looking ahead, although he is really looking straight into the picture, stoically.

14.00 a girl in the picture like a sort of Madonna.

14.10 two boys faces filmed as beautiful, picturesque classical portraits. Vanessa really becomes a portrait painter here.

14.40 blue-eyed lad. Will he really survive the coming war?

15.04 fierce woman that would know what to do with her enemy.

15.24 deep-breathing boy that knows he is in the picture.

15.36 indomitable captain, boss of the show.

15.55 indomitable petty officer.

16.20 the most relaxed of all, handsome head with intellectual spectacles.

16.49 he-men in front of the disco.

17.45 two marines, as if one is the double of the other.

18.01 three tough guys with a captain in the foreground.

18.02 what on earth is going on in these almost goofy heads? Do they know that they are cannon fodder for Rumsfeld in Iraq?

19.10 decorations on chest, what for, for the coming destruction of the Taliban in Afghanistan?

19.41 the wind moves the hair of a girl gazing into the camera.

20.10 a Greek head, with blinking eyes, the characteristic silhouette of the soldiers in the Trojan war?

20.27 splendid row of heads, filmed from the side.

21.03 all these bodies slowly going back and forth, opposing each other’s rhythm.

21.38 the chief officers know the ropes.

22.05 camera distances itself, as in the beginning, increasingly large panoramic view.

22.40 now San Diego is in the picture again, the skyscrapers and the evening lighting of the city.

23.14 shot from above, the jets in the background.

23.58 the distance grows, Vanessa says good-bye to the elitist group.

24.50 shot from the water against the bow of the ship, that arouses the thought of death and destruction.

translation HELEN-ANNE ROSS