Vanessa Beecroft’s Latest Fashion Foray Combines Angelic Models With Valentino Couture

Vogue Ukraine's Art Issue

Photo: Courtesy Vogue Ukraine

Throughout her oeuvre, artist Vanessa Beecroft has explored society’s view of the female form in her controversial and immersive performance art. On occasion, she focuses her work on fashion, joining forces with designers—most notably Kanye West for his Fall 2015 presentation with Adidas Originals—and publications for one-of-a-kind moments. Her latest fashion project is an expansive portfolio for Vogue Ukraine’s second annual Art Issue. Working hand in hand with fashion editor and project curator Olga Yanul, Beecroft merged marble, semi-nude models, and Valentino Couture into one sumptuous fashion story. Speaking to Style.com about the project, Beecroft and Yanul share how this unique portfolio came to be.

How did this collaboration come about?

OLGA YANUL: Once a year Vogue Ukraine does its special Art Issue. The one we made with Vanessa is the second one we have done so far—the first one we did was in collaboration with Marina Abramovic. We’re interested in showcasing the most prominent artists in the world and their correspondence with fashion. It’s a great opportunity to show our readers the best creative minds shaping the modern art world. The fashion part makes the art objects a little bit more narrative,  understandable, and easier to accept. Moreover, it helps to create new meanings. I guess that’s one of the most exciting things in fashion.

Why did you choose to highlight the marble works? 

VANESSA BEECROFT: It began in 2010 when I realized my first marble sculpture, a head in alabaster, in Carrara, Italy. The marble sculptures progressively grew into a sculpture group…[made of] marble of many colors and origin: pink from Portugal, black from Belgium, blue from Macaubas, pink from Francia, green from the Alps, etc. The project became very complicated due to my distance from Carrara, the place where the sculptures are made, since others carve the stone for me. It became an agony. This year, when the Venice Biennale invited me to participate in the Italian Pavilion, giving me a cubical space, I decided to throw in all the marble sculptures I have worked on during the past years to create a marble performance made of fragments. This was the beginning of the creation of this room.

What was the feeling you wanted to convey with these images?

OY: We were interested in Vanessa’s very intimate touch on female beauty and existence. In the way, alive and preserved in stone, they communicate with and fulfill each other.

VB: These images are a consolidation of real women present in my work and their equivalent in marble. They are all present in one room, one evoking the other. The live ones informing the marble ones, and vice versa. I wanted to convey a sense of eternity of life and death co-existing.

How did you go about choosing the clothing that would be used in the images?

VB: I like Valentino Couture; I consider it like the marble in the sense of its purity. I chose the pieces based on minimalism, and sometimes the color or texture that was an equivalent to me of the marble’s veins and texture.

OY: The idea Vanessa was aiming to express was the main starting point. The girls had to look like her marble statues, but still alive, ephemeral, and divine. Valentino dresses—simple, sophisticated, transparent, and monochrome—were a perfect way to embody this idea. Plus, Vanessa introduced us to a very interesting designer from Rome, Cristina Bomba. She made some special pieces: veils, masks, and transparent dresses. Vanessa often works with naked bodies, but as soon as we started to discuss the project, it was clear we needed a fashion message.

How is doing a project for fashion different from a piece you would do for your personal work?

VB: In this case, for example, it required the use of wardrobe, something I do not need in my work to such an extent. Fashion has specifics, art doesn’t. Art is free from constrictions with the market in its making, fashion is not.

What were you looking for when it came time to select the models?

VB: Diaphanous, androgynous women who looked like saints or like Magdalenas.