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<\/p>\nOn Valentine\u2019s Day, the artist Vanessa Beecroft sent an e-mail telling me to go to an address on Wooster Street in Manhattan\u2019s SoHo neighborhood, where she would be, as the e-mail stated, \u201cw Kanye.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHaven\u2019t had a minute since k came to NY, I\u2019m a bit destroyed but please text later,\u201d the e-mail said.<\/p>\n
I arrived at the stated address that evening to see Kanye West leaving the building with his daughter, North West, perched on his shoulder, and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, at his side. West was greeted by a phalanx of paparazzi, whom he posed for, and then piled into a black SUV, off to a Valentine\u2019s Day dinner with his family.<\/p>\n
Beecroft stayed at West\u2019s secret fashion lab on Wooster Street to work on projects for him, as there was a lot to do. The previous Thursday, Beecroft\u2014who vanished from the gallery circuit a decade ago when she cut ties with her dealers, who included Jeffrey Deitch and Larry Gagosian\u2014had staged a performance to accompany the launch of West\u2019s newest fashion line, Yeezy Season 3, and album, The Life of Pablo. The event\u00a0was held at a sold-out Madison Square Garden, screened live in 700 theaters in 23 countries, and streamed on Tidal to more than 20 million viewers. Beecroft\u2019s performance had more real-time viewers than any work of performance art in history.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile I work in museums where people can walk in and out and there isn\u2019t really a spectacle, the configuration of this was more spectacular\u2014people had to sit down, there was all the music,\u201d she said of the performance, once I was cleared to enter the all-white compound where members of West\u2019s entourage were listening to his new album on repeat while eating Starburst candies and drinking Patron tequila. To escape the deafening beats, we moved to the freezing basement of the SoHo space, where models wearing skimpy looks from West\u2019s new collection fumbled through racks of apparel looking for their street clothes.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I was really grateful that Kanye allowed me to do whatever I wanted,\u201d she went on.<\/p>\n
Vanessa Beecroft.<\/p>\n
COURTESY THE ARTIST
\nOver the course of nearly a dozen collaborations in the past eight years, the unlikely duo of Beecroft and West has seen their visions come together in a fluid way. And even if this is not the rarefied context of biennales and retrospectives (a context Beecroft once existed comfortably within, and then spurned), it\u2019s pretty clear that working on this level has improved her practice. What she was missing earlier seems to be, improbably, someone like Kanye West.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe relationship gradually grew to what it is today, when Kanye told me, \u2018Do whatever you want,\u2019 \u201d she said. \u201cI said, \u2018Do you want to show your collection?\u2019 And he said, \u2018I don\u2019t care, just do whatever you want.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Beecroft was born in Italy, and started to gain a reputation as an artist shortly after moving to the United States. She staged her\u00a0performances at Andrea Rosen Gallery, MoMA PS1, and Deitch Projects. Jeffrey Deitch offered her the very first show at that space, which happens to be a block away from Kanye HQ, on Wooster Street. Her work often focused on skinny, nude or near-nude women standing around, bored-looking, for hours. One performance, 2004\u2019s VB54, was set to be unveiled at the former TWA terminal at JFK airport, and featured African American woman standing naked, all shackled in chains. JetBlue, a sponsor of the show, pulled the plug before its debut, and plans to show the work at the Port Authority were botched as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter my career started to fade slowly, being less on a hype, and I moved to Los Angeles, Kanye looked for me,\u201d Beecroft said. \u201cI didn\u2019t know who he was because I don\u2019t know anything about pop culture. I don\u2019t listen to music. And when he approached me I decided to work with him because he was my alter ego: An African American male, and I was a white woman. So I said, it\u2019s perfect, I\u2019m going to take advantage of this channel to do something I could never do before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their first collaboration\u00a0was at a loft in Los Angeles in 2008, during the unveiling of Kanye West\u2019s then-shocking auto-tuned album 808s &\u00a0Heartbreak. It was West\u2019s first foray into the realm of performance art, and the crowd at the event wasn\u2019t sure how to respond.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure it\u2019s beautiful art, and many people can appreciate it on a much deeper level than I can,\u201d the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel told a reporter from Rolling Stone. \u201cBut I look out there and see a lot of good-looking naked girls and it makes me happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
West continued to work with Beecroft, calling on her to act as the art director for his short filmRunaway, which accompanied the release of his 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. They then collaborated on Affordable Care, a performance at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2013, and that year, she designed the sets for West\u2019s\u00a0Yeezus Tour. She was entrusted with the set for West\u2019s blowout wedding to Kim Kardashian, an affair in Milan that supposedly cost $12 million.<\/p>\n
Installation view of VB46 at Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, California, in 2001.<\/p>\n
COURTESY GAGOSIAN GALLERY
\nThe latest\u00a0arc of their collaboration focuses on the musician\u2019s fashion line that he makes for Adidas. The first show, unveiled in February 2015 during New York Fashion Week, was centered around a Beecroft performance; she is now inextricably linked with the brand, and available to work on it at the drop of a hat. For instance: The day after her performance last week, she left for Los Angeles, where she lives with her children. Upon landing, Kanye called her, and she got on a flight back to New York.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was depressed,\u201d Beecroft said, \u201cand I give him this little spark.\u201d<\/p>\n
The\u00a0work with West\u00a0has become Beecroft\u2019s only output\u2014her last solo show under her own name was in Naples, Italy, in 2010.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like, my work, by invading another world, is continuing to impose, and I like that: the power of the work, and the power of influencing lots of people, not necessarily the art elite,\u201d she said. \u201cI abandoned my dealers\u2014all of them. I don\u2019t like to do shows at galleries. I\u2019m actually not very proud of myself, how I behaved with Gagosian, Deitch, all these other European dealers, but I felt like, I\u2019m not going to do another show with this stupid guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, she\u2019s become tethered to the most fascinating and volatile pop-culture figure in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do it all for Kanye,\u201d she said. \u201cMy public facade could just go through him now, I don\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n
West\u2019s most recent fashion show\u00a0also acted as the world premiere of West\u2019s new album, The Life of Pablo. It\u2019s a blast-level dad-rock gospel record, intent on offending solely for the sake of offending,\u00a0a bonkers collection of songs\u00a0oscillating between brilliant and confounding and sprung forth from one unmistakable mind. The album\u2019s namesake could be Picasso, or Escobar, or St. Paul the Apostle.<\/p>\n
Its\u00a0unveiling at Madison Square Garden\u2014an auspicious choice of pavilion, as it was at the Garden where West famously interrupted Taylor Swift mid-speech at the MTV Video Music Awards\u2014was also a triumph. I was there, along with most of the people I follow on Instagram.<\/p>\n
Vanessa Beecroft\u2019s performance at the launch of Yeezy Season 3.<\/p>\n
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND KANYE WEST
\nGetting there\u00a0was no easy feat. The\u00a0ticket distribution system unfolded like a Samuel Beckett play where Karl Lagerfeld served as the costume designer. To receive a ticket, menswear bloggers stood\u00a0in a conference room at a nondescript Midtown hotel, waiting endlessly for their names to be called by an unseen handler. No\u00a0one spoke\u00a0to anyone else,\u00a0but\u00a0everyone watched\u00a0as Kanye\u2019s people handed out tickets to one person every excruciating 10 minutes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The next day, Kanye West walked into Madison Square Garden, plugged his laptop into the arena\u2019s sound system, and played the first song onThe Life of Pablo, which is called \u201cUltralight Beam.\u201d There was a desert-colored tarp draped over an installation placed on the basketball court, and at the hundred-voice apex of that first song,\u00a0the tarp was whipped away to reveal a hundred-strong gang of models wearing the desert-colored looks in Yeezy Season 3, all standing despondent and motionless and defiant. It was\u00a0a euphoric moment, fully Beecroft\u2019s performance, one in line with her entire practice, now fully realized. Their looks, as has been reported by the many outlets that covered the event, were inspired by images a Rwandan refugee camp.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to show to America a picture of poverty, of the poor America,\u201d Beecroft said. \u201cMy intention was to show the third world that is here.\u201d<\/p>\n
And with that in mind, about a hundred frail models stood\u00a0perfectly still for a few hours while millions of people watched. A picture of a lengthy list of instructions, presumably by West, though he hasn\u2019t commented on that, went viral, and included outlandish and contradictory rules spelled out in what can only be described as\u00a0Kanye parlance, in\u00a0all-caps: \u201cDO NOT BE CASUAL,\u201d \u201cDO NOT ACT COOL,\u201d \u201cBEHAVE AS IF NO ONE WAS IN THE ROOM,\u201d \u201cDO NOT EVER LOOK AT THE JUMBOTRON.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEndurance is very important to me,\u201d Beecroft said. \u201cHow long can you hold onto that position without entertaining anyone, and just being there? And start to acquire human qualities, and a look that is no longer glamorous, but introspective?\u201d West, she said, allowed her to have \u201cno action\u201d in her direction of the models. \u201cWe told them don\u2019t move, even if the music is playing.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the end of our conversation, Beecroft told me I should come by the next day to meet West. This, somewhat expectedly, did not pan out.\u00a0\u201cHe\u2019s shy, sorry,\u201d Beecroft said in a text message.\u00a0(West has yet to give an interview to any publication regarding The Life of Pablo\u2014a media blackout strange even for him.)<\/p>\n
Beecroft\u00a0did reveal, however, that West plans on shooting his next video in Mexico, at one of the ancient Aztec pyramids in the Yucatan. She did the location scouting herself.<\/p>\n
She also mentioned a fellow Italian artist, the director Pier Paolo Pasolini, who traveled to Africa in 1970 with the intention of making a film about the African Oresteia. He believed, Beecroft said, that \u201cthe new king of Africa will be the African American musician. And I thought, maybe this is something that will happen someday.\u201d<\/p>\n