Gallery Talks the Metropolitan Museum of Art 26 Ñâãâµãâ½ã‘‚ã‘âãâ±ã‘âã‘â
Concluding week, pop singer Halsey revealed the artwork for her new album If I Can't Take Dearest, I Want Power in a thirteen-minute video set up in the Metropolitan Museum of Fine art.
The video shows the 26-yr-quondam singer, who is expecting a child with boyfriend screenwriter Alev Aydin, walking through the museum's European art galleries clad in a silver bodysuit and ochre veil.
Throughout the video, she pauses to observe diverse paintings, primarily of the Virgin Mary. Aside from the singer, the galleries announced empty and the only soundtrack is the ambient racket of the singer moving through the museum.
At the end, she appears at the base of the museum'southward main staircase, where she pulls back ruby drape to unveil a monumentally scaled photograph of the herself by photographer Lucas Garrido. The photograph captures Halsey seated on a golden throne, wearing a bluish dress and elaborate crown. One of her breasts is bared, and an babe (not her own) is seated on her articulatio genus.
The image is, of course, sharply reminiscent of the depictions of the Virgin Mary we've just observed in the museum halls.
In an Instagram postal service, the vocaliser explained that her fourth studio album, produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, is "a concept album about the joys and horrors of pregnancy and childbirth."
"It was very important to me that the embrace art conveyed the sentiment of my journey over the past few months. The dichotomy of the Madonna and the Whore," she wrote. "This comprehend prototype celebrates significant and postpartum bodies equally something beautiful, to exist admired. We have a long way to go with eradicating the social stigma around bodies & breastfeeding."
Halsey is non the first musician to feature artwork, or even a museum, in a video. In January of this year, FKA Twigs debuted " Don't Judge Me," which prominently featured Kara Walker's sculptural fountain Fons Americanus, on view at Tate Modern in London. And nearly famously, Beyoncé and Jay-Z filmed their 2018 music video, " Apeshit, " at the Louvre in front of (amongst other works) the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo (the video was credited with a surge in museum attendance, too).
Still, Halsey's video is unique in that its focus is primarily on the artworks—non as a properties to her own musical performance. The strangeness of the video had the states wondering what it all ways.
Nosotros've pinned down some art-historical observations that may help you better sympathise what Halsey is after.
Borer Into the Cult of the Virgin (and Her Sacred and Profane Nature)
Duccio di Buoninsegna, Madonna and Kid (ca. 1290–1300)
Throughout Christian history, theologians have debated the dual human and divine natures of the Virgin, and artworks take often reflected these shifting understandings.
As early on equally the second century, the Virgin Mary was described equally a so-called "2nd Eve" who, through the credence of her anointed role every bit Mother of God, served to rest Eve's original sin in the Garden of Eden.
While information technology might be simplistic to proffer Mary equally "Madonna" in opposition to Eve equally "whore," these tensions have been battled out by theologians for centuries, with debates over her sinlessness, her virginity, and her regeneration as a form of idolatry shifting over time.
During the 12th and 13th centuries (and inspired largely by the writings of theologians such every bit Saint Bernard of Clairvaux), the Virgin Mary began to be perceived as an approachable intercessor between sinful humanity and a just God, resulting in a glut of Marian imagery that endured into the Renaissance (the proliferation of "Notre Dames" is a attestation to this period known every bit the Cult of the Virgin).
Halsey stops to discover several Medieval and Renaissance works that capture this dichotomy of the Virgin'southward motherly and also ethereal qualities. Well-nigh notable is Duccio di Buoninsegna's Madonna and Child (ca. 1290–1300), a masterpiece of early Renaissance art that transitions the Virgin from a static, untouchable icon into an emotive figure—what Met curator Keith Christiansen has described every bit her new "homo dimension."
Duccio imbues the work with her newfound humanity by emphasizing the dimensionality of her figure and the sorrow of her face, tying her body to the corporeal realm.
Giovanni di Paolo, Madonna and Kid with Saints (1454). Drove of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The image captures what Halsey aims to depict in herself. "Me as a sexual beingness and my body equally a vessel and gift to my child are 2 concepts that can co-be peacefully and powerfully," she wrote in her Instagram post.
Other artworks in the video similarly evoke these tensions between the divine and human being. In Luca Della Robbia'south Madonna and Child with Curlicue (ca. 1455), the artist tenderly depicts the Virgin and Child but uses terracotta glazed in white to hearken back to classical artifact and an otherworldly "out of attain" realm.
Similarly, Giovanni Bellini's Madonna and Child (tardily 1480s) draws back the "fabric of award"—the textile frequently draped behind the Virgin and Child in paintings—to reveal a landscape defenseless betwixt winter and bound, an earthly metaphor for death and resurrection.
Reimagined Heroines
Artemisia Gentileschi's Esther earlier Ahasuerus (1628-30). Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gallery 621.
Two of the images Halsey pauses before are not depictions of the Virgin Mary, and both are worth noting.
1 is Guido Reni'due south Clemency,which shows a woman breastfeeding with three children in an aboriginal symbol of the virtue. The other is Artemisia Gentileschi's Esther before Ahasuerus, one of the 17th-century creative person's most ambitious paintings.
Hither, Gentileschi shows the Jewish heroine Esther having fainted after entreating her hubby, King Ahasuerus of Persia, to stave off the massacre of the Jewish people, a gesture that would put her at risk of death. Esther's petitioning on the office of the Jewish people has sometimes been interpreted equally an Old Testament forerunner to Mary's intercession on behalf of humankind before God.
What's interesting here is that rather than depict a historical effect, Gentileschi has transformed the biblical narrative into one of gimmicky theater, with a dramatic calorie-free bandage on Esther, who wears an elegant 17th-century clothes. In this fashion, Halsey interjects herself inGentileschi's lineage of bringing historical heroines into the contemporary moment through a process of artistic creation.
A Revival of the Breastfeeding Madonna
The album fine art for "If I Can't Take Dear, I Want Power" showing the 26-yr-old vocalizer as an enthroned Madonna and Child.
At end of the video, Halsey appears at the base of the Met's primary staircase and pulls downwardly a red velvet curtain to reveal her new anthology cover.
The Lucas Garrido photo makes stiff reference to one of art history's most memorable images: TheVirgin and Kid Surrounded by Angels from the Melun Diptych by the French court painter Jean Fouquet.
In this foreign prototype, the Madonna is depicted on an elaborate gold throne, wearing an intricate crown and a blue wearing apparel. 1 breast is bared and the Christ-child is shown on her knee.
This paradigm, which isn't in the drove of the Met but rather the Imperial Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, is a particular conflation of the "Madonna and whore" dynamic Halsey mentions in her Instagram mail.
The Virgin in this image is believed to be a disguised portrait of Agnès Sorel, the mistress of Male monarch Charles VII, who was considered one of the well-nigh beautiful women of her age.
Jean Fouquet, Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels (right wing of the diptych) likewise known equally the Melun Diptych. Courtesy of Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp
The iconography of the prototype is of import to understanding Halsey's album comprehend equally well.
This image is known as a virgo lactans— a breastfeeding delineation of the Madonna. In the 12th century, virgo lactans became popular amongst the surge in Marian imagery; the milk of the Virgin was often interpreted equally the life-giving precursor to Christ'due south blood, which grants eternal life.
Such images, painted at a time when nearly wealthy women hired wet nurses, aligned the Virgin to more common women. Such imagery barbarous out of favor, however, in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation and the Council of Trent on the grounds of propriety—a shift whose repercussions still exist to this day.
In this mode, Halsey'due south own blank-breasted image recalls earlier exaltations of " pregnant and postpartum bodies as something beautiful, to exist admired" in her attempt at, every bit she put it, "eradicating the social stigma around bodies & breastfeeding."
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Source: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/heres-our-art-historical-analysis-of-halseys-13-minute-silent-tour-of-the-met-1988925