Member Since: 4/3/2012
Posts: 1,973
|
Reading the write-ups at the NPG (for Washington) site. Madonna and Michael have 5 or so portraits (with and without write ups), so I picked by most flattering write up. Justin Timberlake is up there too. NPG of Britain is much more picky (I was able to find Madonna, but not Elvis or Michael) or maybe they don't do many Americans in that gallery.
NPG US...
Madonna:
Madonna is a singer-songwriter, dancer, actress, auteur, producer, and fashionista who transformed the postfeminist landscape of American culture. As a new kind of ethnic street-smart woman in the 1980s, Madonna exploded across music, film, and MTV while producing videos and concert tours combining dance-driven spectacle and erotic exhibitionism. Her thrift-store bohemian style influenced a generation of adolescent girls to layer up in fingerless gloves, fishnets, and religious necklaces. Madonna’s club-pop sensibility synthesized aspects of disco, gay culture, and African American dance with the rock-and-roll theatricality of David Bowie and Deborah Harry. At times accused of cultural theft, she is rather an artistic omnivore, taking inspiration from European art films, Indian music, voguing, or African American culture. She was an early activist for gay rights and can point to an acclaimed (if minor) film career. At age fifty-five, Madonna is arguably the most important female musical artist in recording history: her influence on such figures as Lady Gaga and Pink is immeasurable.
(NPG Britain: Madonna Louise Ciccone's rapid rise to fame in Britain began with Holiday (Jan 1984) and her first album Like a Virgin. Six further albums, three world tours and four movies, a flair for reinvention and groundbreaking innovation had, by the end of the eighties, established Madonna as an ultimate role model and the undisputed 'Queen of Pop'. The first woman singer to register 50 Top 10 hits. Since marrying British film director Guy Ritchie, Madonna has acquired properties in Britain including Ashcombe in Wiltshire, once the home of Cecil Beaton. In 2003 published her first children's book The English Roses.)
Michael Jackson:
In 1984, when Time magazine commissioned Andy Warhol to transform Michael Jackson into a pop celebrity icon for its cover portrait, the twenty-six-year-old entertainer had already reached an extraordinary level of fame. Jackson had rocketed to success, first with his brothers—the Jackson 5, whose first four singles topped the charts in 1970—and then through solo albums. His 1982 album Thriller won an unprecedented eight Grammy Awards; subsequent hits were commercial and critical successes throughout the world. As a singer, songwriter, dancer, and dynamic performer, he was unparalleled. "Michael Jackson’s songs, steps, and sexy aura," Time claimed, "set a flashy beat for the decade." Although Jackson’s personal life and changing physical appearance over the years created controversy, his influence on performance and vocal styles as well as music videos, dance, and fashion endured until the singer’s 2009 death at the age of fifty.
Beyoncé:
One of the most popular performers on the planet, Beyoncé is a megastar whose talent embraces singing, dancing, songwriting, acting, and entrepreneurship.
Her music is generally R&B, but also includes pop, electropop, funk, hip-hop, and soul. The Recording Industry of America has recognized her as the Top Certified Artist of the 2000s. As of 2013, Beyoncé was the most-nominated woman in Grammy Award history, winning seventeen awards. She has also won twelve MTV Video Music Awards, a Billboard Millennium Award, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
An electrifying performer, she is known for highly choreographed dance routines that are as eye-popping as her costumes. The New Yorker has described Beyoncé as “the most important and compelling popular musician of the twenty-first century. Right now, she is the reigning national voice.”
Lady Gaga:
The queen of contemporary celebrity spectacle is a wildly theatrical dancer/pop/singer/songwriter from Yonkers born as Stefani Germanotta. She morphed into “Lady Gaga” after studying the sociology of fame, as she once explained on 60 Minutes, and has assiduously cultivated her image into a celebration of “Otherness.”
The Wall Street Journal has noted her “shrewd use of new digital platforms,” and Gaga is one of the few figures able to connect the “narrowcast” cultural fragments of the media age. She considers herself an extension of Andy Warhol’s pop culture universe: “Pop culture is art,” her website states. “It’s sharable fame.”
The spectacle that is Lady Gaga is well choreographed and relentless. “Every day, in the mirror, on the stage. . . I’m always in the boxing ring.” Of her carefully constructed fame, she has explained, “It’s about the performance, the attitude, the look: it’s everything.”
|
|
|
|
