Vanessa Beecroft's 100 Nudes

Perhaps one of the more controversial artists of our times is Vanessa Beecroft, the woman who gets other women to pose nude in public to create her art.

Her latest show, enititled VB55, was staged in Berlin on Friday and has attracted visitors in their hordes. Could it be due to the 100 naked women on display?

Like many artists who use live female nudes as their subject, her work polarises public opinion. Some say she is exploiting women, while others praise her feminist bravura.

Whatever your view, you cannot deny the success of her shows. Beecroft has been working along the same lines for over a decade now, and each show (VB55 is her 55th show) is more elaborate than her last.

Taking place at Berlin's New National Gallery - Die Neue Nationalgalerie - VB55 is Beecroft's most ambitious exhibition yet. It features one hundred 'ordinary' women, aged 18 - 65, standing as still as possible and under strict instructions not to look sexy. Beecroft intends the women to look as natural as possible, while remaining cold and detached from the audience.

The show lasts three hours and, by the end of it, most of the women look exhausted and thoroughly relieved. So what is Beecroft trying to achieve here?

"It's not a concept that can be easily explained. I would say it includes embarrassment, shame, violence and abuse. There is a feeling of embarrassment, no matter if the viewer is a man or a woman" said Beecroft in an interview with The Observer.

Whatever her works says, her shows are always popular. Each one is videoed, with photographers also able to take close-up shots, a practice that that disturbs some. "It's kinda creepy to be honest, seeing guys taking close up pictures of the girls", one visitor told me.

But according to the man who 'discovered' her, Jeffrey Deitch, Beecroft is one of a handful of artists "using sexual imagery from a very powerful, very feminine point of view ... a kind of powerful sexual imagery that can even intimidate the male. If one is present at a Vanessa Beecroft performance, they are not erotic. You feel the power of the women's presence. It is an intimidating image."

Whatever you believe, it is likely that the resulting three prints and solitary DVD will establish a new record for sales of Vanessa Beecroft's art. Just watch this space.

Related Links
Take 100 Nudes - Article from Guardian Unlimited
Vanessa Beecroft - The artist's official homepage