The bodybuilder: Andrea Fraser’s relational aesthetic against the hypocrisy of certain creatives

This entry is posted on number 22-23 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until June 3, 2025

The visitor of a contemporary art exhibition one day entered a gallery and, on a monitor, he saw a friend of his busy having sex with a lady in a hotel room. The lady was Andrea Fraser (Warsaw, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, until June 8)author of the work who consisted in preventing the collector a video of her sexual performance with her.

One of the rules to be able to buy the work was that the or the collector was single, to avoid vandalism by a partner against the work, that is, the artist himself, and not to break the
moral. The meaning of the work was: “All artists prostitute themselves in order to sell their works”.

A little trivial, but in 2003 the result was effective. The Fraser is part of that branch of contemporary art that goes under the name of “Relational aesthetic” where the works establish a direct relationship with the viewer. It may be that a painting or a sculpture establish a relationship with us, but we do not have the evidence.

A dish of pasta cooked by an artist, put in the gallery and ready to be eaten by those who go to visit the exhibition, enter into relationship with the viewer through the mouth. Let alone if the relationship is physical.

Other works of the Fraser consisted in pretending to be a gallery owner who tried to sell works to a real collector, or in undressing during the speech of a fake award ceremony in a museum. His goal: Put the hypocrisy of the art system and its mechanisms bare.

Without Andrea Fraser there would be no banana by Maurizio Cattelan. An art that for some is instigation to commit a crime. For others, more sophisticated or only Creduloni, Between a masterpiece or a dopolavoro joke.

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