Works of Gillian Wearing & Vanessa Beecroft

Pieces of VB 08-36 ---Vanessa Beecroft

Two Images from Signs That Say What You Want Them To Say and Not Signs That Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say---Gillian Wearing

In the world today, there are so many artists that create great works of art. We know of the works of earlier artists as well, such as Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh. However, these historical artists are known by many due to their impacts on the art world. Two artists that may not be know by many people are Gillian Wearing and Vanessa Beecroft. Both artists are very talented, and both relate their work to the public in some way or another. By comparing these two, it helps to create a better understanding of what it is they are trying to convey to their audience. Gillian Wearing was born in 1963, in Birmingham, but moved to London to attend the Chelsea School of Art. Her works emerged among various art exhibits in London, and came to help people discover more about individuals in society. Vanessa Beecroft was born in 1969, in Genoa, Italy. Her art seems to focus more on women, and is a type of performance art. Through her work she fuses conceptual issues and aesthetic concerns. Both artists attempt to introduce more characteristics of certain issues and those individuals and of those individuals that may be involved with those issues. However, it could not deal with any issue, but just the individual.

The early work of Gillian Wearing consisted of a variety of photographs picturing people holding up signs with some sort of writing on them. The piece was called Signs that Say What You Want Them To Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say. This series of photographs did not receive recognition until 1993, however, when it did get displayed; large numbers of people took a liking to it. Wearing picked these people at random, and asked them to write their thoughts on a piece of paper, and then proceeded to take a picture of them. By doing this, Wearing is in a sense challenging the stereotypes of society. She is introducing new things about individuals to show that not all people fall into their common stereotypes in society. Wearing says herself, "A great deal of my work is about questioning handed-down truths." She is introducing things about people that the public as a whole doesn't recognize in their stereotypes of people.

Vanessa Beecroft's work focuses primarily on women. A lot of the women portrayed in her works are nude. Almost all of Beecroft's works focused on women, from her early works to her later ones as well. Her earlier works, referred to as VB 08-36, are presented in a book and focus on female models. She attempted to introduce people to the fashion culture that exists in the world. Fashion is something o importance to women, and she tries to convey that to people. The majority of women being nude help to exemplify their appearance and get people's attention. When people view her work, they raise questions about female representation. She is attempting to put women in a light, in a sense, superior to males when it comes to fashion and representation. Even her later works, such as VB 45 nd 48, focus on women and their sense of fashion.

Both Vanessa Beecroft and Gillian Wearing attempt to introduce the viewers to new characteristics of certain individuals. Although Beecroft focuses primarily on women in her work, she is still very similar to Wearing in what she is trying to convey to the viewers of their work. Beecroft is showing how women are important, and even better than men in things such as the fashion world. Women represent it much better than a man would, which totally goes against the stereotype of women, that men are superior in strength, knowledge, etc. Therefore, Beecroft is introducing people to the fact that women can be superior and do something better than a man could. Wearing says herself that she is attempting to go against the stereotypes of the world today. The images she takes of random people holding up their thoughts is her way of showing people that stereotypes do not always pertain to those people believed to be included in that particular stereotype. In her quote stated above, she states that her work is dedicated to questioning "handed-down truths," or stereotypes of the world. Both of these artists in their own way are presenting the stereotypes of society as wrong, or false. They show people that not every person falls into those given by society; that not every person has to fall into a stereotype pasted down to them throughout history either.