Celebrity Skin

"Francesco Vezzoli is fascinated by the trappings of modern celebrity and consumer culture. His works – which have featured stars including Natalie Portman and Catherine Deneuve – are teasing adverts for non-existent products, which in the past have included a new version of Caligula (Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal’s Caligula, 2006) and an imaginary fragrance, Greed (2009). Jeu de Paumes, Paris is showing a film version of one of Vezzoli’s 2007 performance works until January 16th, and to celebrate, he has produced an advertising campaign for another fabricated exhibition at the gallery. Today Dazed Digital premieres Vezzoli’s poster designs for the fake exhibition, "La Nuova Dolce Vita: Social Life and the Imperial Age. From Poppaea to Anita Ekberg" which the artist explains in detail below.
A sumptuous video trailer featuring Eva Mendes also premieres today on Eluxury.com. Check it out here".

The expression “Dolce Vita” immediately conjures up a vision of glamour and decadence. Anita Ekberg, emerging like Venus from the waters of the Trevi fountain in Fellini’s 1960 masterpiece, was an icon of the dramatically altered social climate of post-war Italy. Behind the curtain of Christianity lurks the legacy of pagan Rome. Across the centuries, periods of lavishness, grandeur and sensuality have always followed periods of austerity. The history of Rome is a perfect example. The exhibition "La Nuova Dolce Vita: Social Life and the Imperial Age. From Poppaea to Anita Ekberg” is the first to examine how those periods of excess affected the representation of femininity and beauty in art.

The show brings together remarkable masterpieces from the 5th century BC to the present day, from sculptures such as the Birth Of Venus From The Ludovisi Throne (appx. 480 BC), Saint Theresa In Ecstasy (1647-1652) by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Paolina Borghese as Venus Victrix (1805-07) by Antonio Canova, to stills from famous sequences of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Marble and celluloid share an intensely sexualized approach to the female body, and a reference to an idea of antiquity, of the myth – perfectly embodied by Rome - where beauty, luxury and the pleasures of love are the ultimate goals before the tragedy of over-civilization.