Week Seven Reading

Vanessa Beecroft
Epitomizing Biography- Single White Female
(224-229)
By the end of this reading I was overall kind of confused. I started off trying to defend her work and the idea of using female models as an art piece, but I just ended confused by the article's contradictions and her own. Mostly it just made me think about awareness in art, and how aware is she of what she is doing? How aware am I of my own work? How aware is any artist? Sometimes we start off aware, or throughout a project we become more so. Often times I think critiques are going to make artists out to be much more aware of what they are doing than what they actually are. People strive to have a meaning to everything, especially in art. They crave a deeper meaning than what is often there. Or if they don't agree then they will create a new one, or say that the artist isn't aware, or has no meaning. When an artist admits they are doing something just to do it, or for pure aesthetic value, people get upset. But I think everyone is more shallow then they are willing to admit, and they assign meanings to make themselves feel better for not liking things on a pure aesthetic level. Or if there is a concept, they don't appreciate the aesthetic level, or certainly not in the same way. Basically, people are never happy with anything.