Francesco Vezzoli

Ballet Russes Italian Style (The Shortest Musical You Will Never See Again), 2009,
art performance  featuring Lady Gaga and the Bolshoi Ballet

Crying Portrait of Christie Brinkley as a Renaissance Madonna with Holy Child ( after Giovanni Bellini),  2010
inkjet print on canvas, cotton & metallic embroidery, fabric, custom jewelry, watercolor, make-up & artist’s frame, 88 x 53 x 4 in.

Crying Portrairt of Wilhelmina as a Renaissance Madonna with Holy Child (after Leonardo), 2010
inkjet print on canvas, cotton & metallic embroidery, fabric, custom jewelry, watercolours, make-up & artist’s frame,83 x 53 x 5 3/8 in.

Crying Portrait of Nomi Campbell as a Renaissance Madonna with Holy Child (after Cima de Conegliano), 2010
inkjet print on canvas, cotton & metallic embroidery, fabric, custom jewelry, watercolor, make-up & artist’s frame,  93 x 53 x 4.5 in.

Greed, The Perfume That Doesn’t Exist, 2009, crystal, paper and ribbon, 15 11/16 x 10 5/8 x 5 1/8 in. Unique, 2 APs

Enjoy The New Fragrance (Frida Kahlo for Greed), 2009
inkjet, wool, cotton, metallic embroidery & custom jewelry on brocade, 70 7/8 x 51 3/16 in.

Enjoy The New Fragrance (Georgia O’Keeffe for Greed), 2009
inkjet, wool, cotton, metallic embroidery & custom jewelry on brocade, 70 7/8 x 51 3/16 in.

no info available

About Francesco Vezzoli

Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli has, over the past decade, charmed Cate Blanchett, Helen Mirren, Courtney Love, and Gore Vidal, among others, into appearing in his films and performances. He even collaborated with Roman Polanski on a commercial for an imaginary fragrance featuring Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams. But perhaps the artist’s ultimate pop culture coup came in 2009, when he directed a ballet-cum-spectacle starring Lady Gaga for the 30th-anniversary gala of Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art. For Vezzoli it marked the point of diminishing returns.

“After Lady Gaga I thought, Time to go back full circle,” he says. “Maybe I work with my mother.” A new video featuring Vezzoli’s mamma in the role of the Virgin Mary [was] one of the works in “Sacrilegio,” his February – March 2011 solo show at Gagosian’s West 21st Street location in New York.  Also included in the exhibition [were] new needlepoint pieces based on 15th-century Italian renderings of the Virgin Mary that are overlaid with the faces of Eighties supermodels.

“The Church commissioned some of the most erotically charged images in the history of art,” Vezzoli explains. “Using supermodels is my way of saying that the original paintings are really sensual.”

Yet despite the subject matter—and the fact that he calls Gagosian’s gallery “the chapel of Chelsea”—Vezzoli doesn’t count himself among the faithful. “I believe in the religion of other people’s creativity,” he says, adding that he refused Communion at age nine. “Catholicism wasn’t for me. I’m not holy enough— I’m a dirty boy.”

Artist Bio

Francesco Vezzoli was born in 1971, in Brescia, Italy. He studied at the Central St. Martin’s School of Art in London from 1992 to 1995 and currently lives and works in Milan.

Vezzoli has had solo shows in several major venues including Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Museu Serralves, Porto; Fondazione Prada, Milan and Le Consortium, Dijon. His works have also been included in several biennials such as the 2006 Whitney Biennial, the 49th and 51st Venice Biennials, the 26th São Paulo Biennial; the 6th International Istanbul Biennial; and in group shows at Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Tate Liverpool; and the Migros Museum, Zurich

Francesco Vezzoli at Gagosian Gallery