Louis Vuitton and the artifice of Vanessa Beecroft

by Carmen Nge



“Shocking people is a very profound way to reach them,” pontificates the French high priestess of interior design, Andrée Putman, in reference to Vanessa Beecroft, the New York based Italian artist, who recently presented her work at Espace Louis Vuitton, the new 400-square-meter exhibition space of the leather goods giant.

For the Louis Vuitton flagship store along the Champs-Elysées, what could be more shocking than exorbitantly priced leather goods and accessories? But in the art gallery-esque space on the seventh floor of LV’s historic house, cow skin aficionados ogled at skin of a different animal: woman.

Beecroft, an artist best known for her live installations of nude and semi-nude women, inaugurated the opening of Espace with a three hour performance that employed the quintessential icon of boutiques: the mannequin. Instead of life-size synthetic replicas of human perfection, Beecroft used the real thing—black, brown, and white women artfully draped and posed on the shelves alongside LVclassics: studded leather suitcases, monogrammed handbags and pricey leather trunks.

Nude except for G-strings, these 30 toned models have their heads encased in transparent nylon skullcaps and their long hairless legs entwined in white leather straps, like ballerinas, but in LV heels. Their expressions are vacuous, their bodies motionless—live mannequins on display. Slender and silent, these women blend with their environment, their glistening, polished and shaved skins as deep-hued and richly coloured as the leather luggage that accompany them.

In the French language, there is no distinction between the word “fashion model” and “mannequin”. The same word, mannequin, is used to refer to both. What the artist has done is to inhabit the human model with the lifelessness of a mannequin and by design, to render the women as objects—as much “things” as their leather goods counterparts.

Will human skin someday be the new leather? Women, in particular, have been the palette for all manner of artistic interpretation for centuries. From the bodacious babes of Renaissance paintings to the thin-is-in fashion models of today, women have been valued as spectacles to be viewed, venerated and vaunted. It is only a matter of time before female materiality is recast as material goods.

It is not too surprising, therefore, to read that one of the audiences to a prior Beecroft live exhibition, titled VB46—showcasing entirely nude female models—enquired as to the price tag of the women on display.

Aside from the live performances, on the walls of the Espace Louis Vuitton, the artist hangs original artwork comprising 13 massive photographs. Entitled Alphabet Concept, these photographs are a playful representation of the all-too familiar Louis Vuitton logo. Once again using women—again, completely nude except for gaudy clown-like wigs—as her artistic tools, Beecroft recreated the logo anthropomorphically.

“My aim was to fold and bend the women to write the Louis Vuitton brand name, but in a way that also recalls classicism and beauty. Some of the women look like the pilasters of Italian Renaissance balconies,” the artist explains, in an LV interview.

Women as marble pillars, women as handbags, women as objects of art. It seems art has changed very little over the years.

In her interview with Clémence Boulouque, Andrée Putman remarks that Beecroft’s work suggests “the victory of a woman over the world of men” because a male artist could never execute such a work; to do so would be “unforgivable”. But what is it about Beecroft’s use of women that so entrances the critics?

Perhaps it is the satisfaction of being able to view live nude women, presented as objects, without guilt. Beautiful women on display can be enjoyed and delightfully pored over like LV handbags; in short, they can be willfully objectified without audiences fearful of being labeled politically incorrect. The French call it “porno chic”—the new face of art where sex and shopping, porn and advertising go hand in hand. “French luxury marques have always tended towards nudity and provocation,” confirms Isabelle Musnik, editor of the style magazine Influencia, to the BBC. How very postmodern.

And who better to tell us how to ogle women than a woman herself?

Vanessa Beecroft, who is widely known to have struggled with anorexia and exercise bulimia (psychiatrists define this as a compulsive need to burn off unwanted calories using excessive exercise), is the perfect conduit for our masochistic desire to flagellate ourselves on the altar of 21st century classical beauty. The live models for her show may be beautiful to look at but they are as lifeless and devoid of individuality as LV leather goods. Visually homogenous and united in their sameness, the race and ethnicity of the women are secondary because their skin tones define them. Their beauty lies in their ubiquity; their identities are culled from their surroundings.

Putman lauds the emptiness in the model’s look. She praises Beecroft for successfully recreating absence in her photographs of the feminized LV logo. The cavernous space within the Maison Vuitton allows the audience to experience a tangible sense of distance from the women shaped into alphabets. We see the logo before we see the women. When we move closer, the bodies, now visible, look like objects—artificial and motionless.

From models on the catwalk to models in advertisements, from pop stars to film stars, we have imbibed the culture of critical distance. In today’s mass consumer market, we objectify ourselves in an attempt to feel connected to a culture of rampant objectification. We scrutinize ourselves in the mirror, we angle our bodies to get a better view of the parts that need liposuctioning or body sculpting. We are DIY artists of the highest order and our bodies are our art tools. If we cannot shape the world, we can at least shape ourselves.

And what better shape to mold ourselves into if not a famous brand?


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This article was first published in Off The Edge magazine, August issue.