![]() ![]() Another uneasy response was immediately thinking of those memes of Puff Daddy standing in front of the Mona Lisa, etc. Art was being used to signify status with no meaning outside of cultural capital and luxury. It's not the responsibility of the artists featured nor the director to give each painting its proper due, but I did feel like the art was only being used as a backdrop in this case. Now, obviously JAY-Z and Beyoncé looking at art at the museum would be a really boring music video (though I would love to be a fly on the wall to overhear their conversation about the Mona Lisa). Art is not merely a photo-op, and posing in front of art is reducing it to a backdrop. People photograph everything, look but don't see, understanding very little of context. My second thought, and I'm not proud of this, was, ruefully "cool, more museum selfies." One of my pet peeves is, in spite of how many visitors there are in museums, how little time people actually spend looking at the art. I'm less sure about this current project. The relationship between Julie Dash and Arthur Jafa's Daughters of the Dust and Beyoncé's Lemonade was, to my mind, a brilliant way to incorporate art in a music video, elevating the music and, in some ways, highlighting the artistic inspiration. The video itself is gorgeously shot, and does show a continued interest in art on behalf of the artists, JAY-Z and Beyoncé, to engage with art (notable precursors being JAY-Z's "Picasso Baby," and Beyoncé's use of David Hammons and Richard Prince in “7/11”). My first reaction, was being thrilled that art was being featured in a music video at all. The Eye of Horus, an ancient Egyptian symbol for power and protection also appeared atop her custom Balmain-designed crest.First of all, what were your initial reactions to the “APESHIT” video? Egyptian goddess Nefertiti was the singer's inspiration for her costume seen during the opening of her Coachella performance. In her video for Hold Up, she notoriously channeled Oshun, an ancient goddess native to Nigeria and throughout west Africa who worshippers in the Ifè religion still pray and extend offerings to this day. Visuals seen in Lemonade and her costumes from her Coachella performance are all native to Africa. The use of the work for the Magna Carta Holy Grail album, which is Jay-Z's 12th album at the peak of his career, could be representative of his own personal transformation.īeyonce, on the other hand, often opts to unite art and religion. The work, which is informed by the story of two nymphs in Greek mythology, is housed in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and famously symbolizes metamorphosis. ![]() Jay-Z took it to the next level in 2013 for the album art for Magna Carta Holy Grail with a more literal arts influence: he took inspiration from Battista di Domenico Lorenzi's sixteenth century sculpture Alpheus and Arethusa. The outcome was fitting for how legendary the album has become. The gilded album art was designed by Riccardo Tisci and embroidered with a range of customized motifs. An early example of this is Watch the Throne, a joint album Jay-Z released with Kanye West in 2011. In recent years, both Beyonce and Jay-Z merged their taste for fine art into their visuals and costumes. While all roads have led to Apeshit, a global presentation of the most iconic art sharing the spotlight with the world's most iconic music artists, the Carters have had a long fascination with ancient art and religion. This is neither Beyonce or Jay-Z's first time blending art with their musical endeavors. Instead, it's a more nuanced commentary on their marriage and the state of the world entirely. But for the Carters, filming at the 225-year-old institution could represent more than the couple's knack for extreme luxury and bragging rights. Since the video's premiere, the meme keepers of the Internet have been at work cementing just how explosive the visuals were, even for the music world's most famous couple. While the collaboration may have seemed inevitable-the couple released their first single together in 2002 performed a joint world tour in 2014 and are currently on their On The Run II tour together-no one, not even the BeyHive’s most devoted followers, could have predicted what was to come in the album's first video.Īpeshit, a hard-hitting track produced by the Carters and Pharrell Williams, was filmed inside the Louvre in Paris, the largest and most revered art museum on earth. Beyonce and Jay-Z shook up the world Saturday with the surprise release of their joint album Everything is Love. ![]()
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