Madonna and contemporary arts
When she moved to New York City to pursue a career in modern dance, she befriended and dated various plastic artists, including Andy Warhol, Martin Burgoyne, Keith Haring and her boyfriend Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Her other activities include to co-initiate "Art for Freedom" in 2012, runs the artistic installation X-STaTIC Pro=CeSS (2003) and create the NFT digital artworks, "Mother of Creation" along with Mike Winkelmann ("Beeple") in 2022.
[12] Hernandez and his team, also took interest to grom her as a star, and her Parisian patrons, intended to develop and marked Madonna as a disco singer, paying her expenses, and further classes for singing, dancing and conversational French lessons.
[10][38] In his Madonna biography, Andrew Morton commented that her "stunning visual sense" is no accident as she "spent a lifetime" studying photographs, black-and-white movies and paintings.
For instance, her friend Martin Burgoyne designed the cover art of "Burning Up" (1983), which featured a grid of twenty postage stamp-sized portraits of Madonna in every color of the rainbow,[51] while graffiti artist Michael Stewart appeared as a dancer in her debut music video "Everybody".
[53] Street artist Mr. Brainwash entered the music scene when Madonna commissioned him to design the cover art of Celebration, its video compilation, and a special edition vinyl.
[54] In 2017, Madonna invited Brazilian street artist Eduardo Kobra to paint two murals at the Mercy James Institute for Pediatric Surgery and Intensive Care.
[72][67] She made a performante at Gagosian Gallery in New York, to mark the launch of the initiative, showing her bound, handcuffed, and dragged on stage by performers in police uniforms.
[73][74] Each of the digital artworks is accompanied by music and a voiceover by Madonna, who reads poetry by poet Jalaluddin Rumi and reportedly spent one year creating the project.
[81][96] The works Untitled (1985) by American painter Julia Wachtel and The Six Second Epic (1986) by Kenji Fujita were bought by the Brooklyn Museum with funds from Madonna "Ciccone Penn".
However, the clash of Nicholas Serota and pop icon Madonna produces its own pleasurable frisson; seeing a woman talk about art on television remains a rare sight, and it always to be welcome".
[124] British art historian Julian Stallabrass was convinced that the intention without doubt of having Madonna announce the Tate's Turner Prize, was to raise the profile of the event further.
[144] In William Baker's words, the splitting of sections derived that pretty much everyone copies or everyone is inspired by,[145] and further mentioned "the modern pop concert experience was created by Madonna really".
[146] Scholars and journalists, including Berrin Yanıkkaya and Matt Cain, detailed how she "paved the way" of extravaganza in concerts as a theatrical spectacle and having the female figure at center stage.
[147][148] If a specific title is mentioned, it is generally the Blond Ambition World Tour, for which Jacob Bernstein of The New York Times recognized other contemporary musicians, but with Madonna, he says, she set the tone.
[149] Speaking about her perceived influence, in The Twisted Tale of Glam Rock (2010), Stuart Lenig wrote: "Over the decades, Madonna's carefully choreographed and performed shows became a gold standard of pop theatre, inspiring others to re-embrace the stage".
[153] On the point, Martha Bayles said in the mid-1990s, "pundits, professors and preachers" tried to interpret Madonna "taking her far more seriously than others", further explaining that it was "more important one's relation to the visual arts instead one's musical statement".
[174][175] The Smithsonian Institution said Madonna helped transform pop concerts into dance spectacles, further crediting her with popularizing the use of headset microphones to allow greater movement and used choreography.
[182] Los Angeles Times echoed criticisms and counter-criticisms,[183] with editors of Encyclopedia of Women in Today's World (2011), noting how some have seen her films or acting as "notable".
[221] Her broadcast profile as an artiste in the arts-based BBC One series Omnibus in 1990, divided some from art community and public of the time, and according to Walker, "letters and articles subsequently appeared in the press both for and against" her.
[225] In On Fashion (1994) by scholars Shari Benstock and Suzanne Ferriss, it was concluded that she challenges and "puts in question and tests one's aesthetic categories and commitments", but she can be viewed as a modernist.
[226] In 1993, Walker suggested the debate she provoked after Omnibus's episode was a perhaps "sign of its cultural significant",[60] and retrospectively recognizes her a decade later, for seemingly understands "art depends upon artifice, creation, invention, imagination and masquerade".
[234] Following Michael Jackson's death, a panel of Argentine art journalists and critics considered her at that time as "the only universal artist left standing" of an entire era.
Those critics, including Daniel Molina, Graciela Speranza and Alicia de Arteaga explained that she is herself "a multimedia expression that condenses fashion, dance, photography, sculpture, music, video and painting".
[248] Regarding inspirations Madonna took from plastic artists, music journalist Ricardo Pineda in a conversation with news agency EFE in 2019, describes her mentions and references were favorable for their legacies.
[101] Brazilian visual artist, Aldo Diaz, who also collaborated with her, talked about Madonna's influence for him to the point he began to study photography, arts and became a graphic designer.
[39] In 1993, Janis Bergman-Carton published in Texas Studies in Literature and Language an article that examined how "both women have become part of standard journalistic reportage", with mutual benefit, but also reminds the "interpenetration of the domains of art and celebrityhood has a lengthy history in Western culture, dating back to the Renaissance".
[268] In 2019, Spanish plastic artist Mikel Belascoain, created the first art building of Pamplona, capital city of Navarra, Spain with several paintings of her, calling the artwork Madonna 1986.
[27] On October 25, 2024 British singer Boy George painted Madonna as part of a series of artworks titled "Fame" with Castle Fine Art.
[274][275] In 2013, the Guayaquil Municipal Museum hosted a multidisciplinary exhibition, titled Madonna: Ícono cultural-arte, moda y filatelia exploring her impact and references in art, fashion, philately and numismatics.
