Vanessa Beecroft aboard the USS Intrepid - Brief Article

Art in America, Oct, 2000 by Edward Leffingwell

It was a dark and stormy night as the crowds of those follow Vanessa Beecroft's activities filed aboard the Intrepid Sea Air Space Museum, and aircraft carrier berthed at a Hudson River pier. Those in attendance were lured by Beecroft's reputation for spectacle. Her aims were in this instance supported by the Public Art Fund and Deitch Projects in cooperation with the Undersea Warfare Community of the United States Navy. The event was also an off-site component of the Whitney Biennial. Both invitation and poster depicted the Intrepid in formidable, heroic profile as a suitable venue for Beecroft's event. The sponsor's updates encouraged the numerous and hopeful audience to expect, come hell or high water, ranks of smartly dressed sailors arrayed on the flight deck of the carrier, bathed in blue light. More or less immobile objects of the solicited gaze, these sailors would represent the image of a nation's pride. The viewing was instead confined to cramped quarters below decks. Frustrating the expectations of the assembled public as they fumbled along a cordoned aisle that allowed them not much more than a passing glimpse of the objects of Beecroft's hubristic exercise.

For a photo session the night before, the weather held and the navy men and women performed on cue, the recruiting-quality photographic documents boasting crisp ranks a measured arm's length apart, light gleaming off ribbons, medals, braid and caps. In June 1999 in San Diego, the first of Beecroft's military portraits, the "portrayal" of the depersonalized sexuality of the all-male U.S. Navy Seals had pushed the envelope of her intentions (manifested in previous works by displays of scantily clad young women) further along the path to specialized prurience. Aboard the Intrepid, Beecroft upped the fetishistic ante of her work and the redundant display of its machinery. She informed those in attendance at a formal banquet that concluded the evening that this 42nd of her live events, VB42 Intrepid--The Silent Service, honored the Undersea Warfare Community on the occasion of the Submarine Centennial anniversary, without quite saying how.

The sailors were selected by th navy to be part of this event, billed in a Public Art Fund press release as participants in "an intersection of military rules and aesthetics with those of the world of art." The spectacle Beecroft achieved was intended as a "live composition," representing "an abstract portrait of Naval values as well as a literal portrait of the Sailors themselves." Not a few in attendance remarked on the resemblance of her work to the regimented muscularity of Third Reich films by Leni riefenstahl. While Beecroft's project may have succeeded on he own terms, that artist has apparently come to believe in her own opaque publicity.