The artist has significantly chosen the term “Nude" and not "Naked”. The concept is therefore not the human body in a helpless, defenseless state, stripped of clothing, but rather, the human body as it has been portrayed throughout art history.

By choosing the direction of “nudity” over “nakedness”, Vanessa Beecroft seems to invite the artists not to abandon the path traced by classical art and the tradition of figure drawing – from Leonardo, to Michelangelo, to Giorgione, to Titian – but rather to shift it towards their own era...

Jeffrey Deitch, co-author of the title, points out that “The most compelling art simultaneously celebrates and upends the artistic tradition”.

For that matter, Vanessa’s work has never failed to acknowledge the degree to which it draws on art history; she herself emphasizes that she is a product of classical, Greco-Roman, European culture. It is her very skill in framing a modern reflection on the power of aesthetics through artistic transformation that has created such interest in her work.

Vanessa Beecroft’s work hovers on the threshold between physicality and abstraction, bringing a political, real dimension into the symbolic realm of art. The nudity she presents through her models is a provocation that many have misunderstood, failing to grasp that nudity, like sincerity, means nothing without interpretation.

In a world where nudity is overexposed to the point of losing all interest, the artist reminds us that stripping down also means putting oneself on the line. And, when it is not too narcissistic, the processing of personal experience can also be part of an unveiling that becomes important because it manages to successfully transmute and resolve itself into form.

The finalists are now asked to present a new project proposal based on which the international jury will choose the winner, to be announced in a press conference this November at Palazzo Reale in Milan.

In addition to the opportunity to study and work abroad through an artist residency, the winner will get the chance to create the proposed work with support from Fondazione Furla; the piece will be available for public viewing through a loan to Museo del Novecento in Milan, and will be presented in Milan during miart 2015, the International Art Fair of Modern and Contemporary Art, in April 2015, and in Venice at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in May 2015, during the 56th Venice Biennale.