Francesco Vezzoli (b. 1971)

Working in film, performance and needlepoint, Milan-based artist Francesco Vezzoli explores the darkness and glamour of the media machine. The present work is from a series which features the faces of actors associated with the 1959 Southern Gothic mystery Suddenly Last Summer, each set within a star-shaped, gilt-framed canvas. On close inspection, Vezzoli’s ‘Walk of Fame’ reveals a web of subversion and instability. Beyond lead actors like Katharine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift, he also includes minor cast-members, as with David Cameron as Young Blonde Interne; this near-unknown is given a powerful aura of fame in his blue star. The series also features substitutions (Elizabeth Taylor is replaced by a picture of her dog), as well as actors who didn’t appear in the film: Vezzoli includes Spencer Tracy, whose 26-year affair with Katharine Hepburn has been claimed to be a cover for the same-sex desires of both actors. Truths and fictions begin to blur. Roleplay and drama weave in and out of real life, and a queer narrative threads through Vezzoli’s sources. Suddenly Last Summer’s plot centres around the mysterious murder of Sebastian, a closeted gay man; the star Montgomery Clift’s own homosexuality was an open secret; the movie was based on a play by Tennessee Williams and a screenplay by Gore Vidal, who themselves both had relationships with men. (Vidal is a favourite source for Vezzoli, whose video work Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal’s ‘Caligula’ debuted at the 2005 Venice Biennale). Finally, in his adornment of the black-and-white portraits with sparkling red, white and blue thread, Vezzoli leaves his actors weeping and wounded. David Cameron as Young Blonde Interne cries glittering blue tears, each bejewelled with a single white star, as a ruby stream of blood trickles from his nose. The embroidery makes the obscure actor into an all-American tragic muse, and also calls to mind the figurative sense of ‘embroidering’ or embellishing a story. Vezzoli weaves together complex layers of performance, beauty, romance, secrecy and violence in a shrewd restaging of Hollywood spectacle.