Let’s face it – nudity, or semi nudity, is everywhere at the moment – from Miley Cyrus twerking her way into the VMAs to Rihanna stripping down to her bare essentials in her recent ‘Pour it Up’ video. Nakedness and sexuality in pop music seems to be unavoidable –and shocking for its impact on the younger generation when 80% of respondents surveyed by Netmums have found their children mouthing explicit lyrics from pop songs without realising their meaning.
Nudity in this business is hardly a new phenomenon or debate –the days when a scantily clad Christina Aguilera was strutting and grinding in just a bra and a leather trouser/thong combination in her ‘Dirrty’ video aren’t that far behind us. It was memorable and highly controversial – but it does make you wonder if female nudity in pop music is anything more than a crude, attention-grabbing sexualisation of women? Could it honestly be seen as something else?
There is one female artist who maybe thinks so. Sure enough, Lady Gaga has made no secret of her desire and drive for fame and attention with two albums entitled ‘The Fame’ and ‘The Fame Monster’ and a recent single about her love for ‘Applause’. With her new album cover also featuring her in the nude, legs akimbo around an odd blue ball and her hands cupping her barely covered breasts, it may also be difficult to see past the obvious sexuality that seems to be part and parcel of Lady Gaga’s public persona.
Is it just for the fame, though, or are we to believe her declarations that her latest effort, ARTPOP, is a ‘reverse Warholian expedition’ (a reference to famous Popart artist Andy Warhol), pointing to a combination of artistic expression and pop. Could there then be a hidden artistry in nudity and sexuality in pop music that we’re just missing?
Artistic influences are abundant in ARTPOP- you can’t doubt the presence of Botticelli’s ‘The Birth of Venus’, since the famous image is interspersed in a spectrum on the album cover and the song ‘Venus’ dedicated the Roman Goddess herself. Jeff Koons, who collaborated with Gaga on the album artwork, has commented on just how much classical ideology – particularly his artistic take on it – influenced Gaga. “She got down on the floor in front of some of the sculptures, especially a sculpture of Ariadne,” he told MTV News about his meeting with her. “I would take classical sculptures and have a mold of them made and I would put a gazing ball on it.”
On the cover itself, he said: “Gaga [is] of course in the role of Venus — of the nature of the continuation of life’s energy and the pursuit and the enjoyment of aesthetics and of beauty.”
The ‘enjoyment of aesthetics’ and the ‘beauty’ of female nudity were certainly not a problem for the Romans; images and sculptures of naked women (and indeed men!) from classical mythology pop up everywhere from this period, especially Venus.
Despite nakedness being a huge part of our global cultural history, fast-forward to the 21st century and the female naked form is a big issue – Lady Gaga dressed in seashell bikini with all its artistic implications is still controversial.
Perhaps with Gaga, it’s just hard to forget how important fame is to her since it places her in an industry where artistry often comes secondary to controversy. The sad fact is that the easiest way to achieve that is cheap sexualisation; one that unfortunately, in this overly connected world, has the habit of seeping into minds too young to understand what intentionally adult songs such Gaga’s ‘Do What U Want’ mean.
Indeed, it might be impossible to find any artistic relevance or taste in Miley Cyrus’s nude bikini and foam finger, but as Elton John himself recently said on The Ellen Show about Miley in the pop world, particularly the VMAS: “The whole purpose of the VMAS when you’ve got all these artists competing against each for attention is to flatten the opposition. She flattened the opposition”.
There may be nothing wrong with nudity as an art form itself; it’s just difficult to see much evidence for artistic intention in pop-star nudity with an awareness of the industry that artists are attempting to top.
Sources:
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1717125/lady-gaga-artpop-album-art-jeff-koons.jhtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23847366
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/07/pop-stars-sexy-netmums-parents-miley-cyrus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64Xu5ykU5uk
Edited by Faiza Peeran