![]() One of the few exceptions to that trend is Marie Benoist’s “ Portrait d’une négresse,” also displayed at the Louvre. #Beyoncé #EverythingIsLove /IMrVlyl6wf- Queen Curly Fry June 17, 2018 Beyoncé’s vision and talent is unmatched. This moment right here is the fulfillment of my art history degree. Y’all this #Apeshit video has me losing my shit. And coming from a black woman, that’s a radical statement. So when Beyoncé shoots at the Louvre - taking on by turns the poses of Venus de Milo and Victory - she’s continuing an artistic project of recontextualizing classical Western art, of making herself the aesthetic object on which so much wealth and cultural capital has been spent. Her pregnancy announcement photo shoot and her birth announcement photo shoot both referenced Botticelli’s Venus and the Renaissance trope of the Madonna and child, and her 2017 Grammys performance drew on goddess imagery from multiple artistic traditions. For the past few years, Beyoncé has increasingly cribbed from the iconography of classical Western art in her own image-making. If you want to show that you have made it, that you are rich and powerful and one of the greatest artists of your generation, you go to the Louvre.Īnd as an artistic choice, the Louvre is par for Beyoncé’s course. But music videos aren’t about numbers they’re about how things feel - and there’s no place on earth that feels as lavish, as rich with accumulated cultural power and wealth and colonialism, as the Louvre. ![]() And to prove that she and her husband have made it, in the song’s accompanying video, Beyoncé delivers this line from the Louvre.Īs the New York Times has pointed out, it is not actually that expensive to shoot a video in the Louvre (about $17,500 for a full day’s shoot). The Eye of Horus, an ancient Egyptian symbol for power and protection also appeared atop her custom Balmain-designed crest.“I can’t believe we made it,” sings Beyoncé in “Apeshit,” the first single from her surprise joint album with Jay-Z, Everything Is Love. 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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