In Self-Reliance Emerson said “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all… that is genius.” Artist Vanessa Beecroft embodies this conviction — she has pursued the ultra-personal and shared her findings with the same energy. Saying this, makes us want to reconfigure the Emerson quote: when an artist resolves to utilize their facility to share deeply and personally, it emboldens others to do the same; and this is one of the principle beauties in life. We mean no sanctimony or silliness here; it has been our direct experience that the opposite is true (and common): when culture is aimed only at pleasing large swaths of people, when it is general and impersonal, it encourages people to be guarded (and scheming) in their relations and tow a status quo. Perusing Beecroft’s site through all the decades, we are moved to say that perhaps the personal is universal and useful when it transcends itself.