Lady Gaga has been called a “foul-mouthed, pants allergic, electro-loving pop princess” by the lads’ magazine Maxim. She’s also been called “one of the Nijinskys of our epoch” by Milanese artist Francesco Vezzoli. Both these descriptions seemed apt when she performed with the Bolshoi Ballet last Saturday.
Francesco Vezzoli masterminded the benefit event for the 30th anniversary of Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art. His art has always shown an obsession with fame. His back catalogue, for example, includes a star-studded advertisement for an entirely fictional perfume called ‘Greed’. And, like fame, the MOCA event itself was fleeting – he subtitled the performance as “The Shortest Musical You Will Never See Again”.
While photographs bear witness to the night’s share of celebrities, it was more than just a paparazzo’s dream. If Gaga is to be Nijinsky, then Vezzoli is happy to play Diaghilev. “Diaghilev has always been a big hero of mine,” he recently told The Daily Beast. Hence his famous collaborators, drawn from different artistic spheres, took their creative lead from the tradition of the Ballets Russes.
The spirit of the Ballets Russes is evident in every aspect of Lady Gaga’s onstage appearance. Her blue lipsticked pout matched the butterflies added to her piano by enfant terrible of the British art world, Damien Hirst. Her headdress was designed by architect Frank Gehry; the evening’s masks by Australian director Baz Luhrmann and his wife Catherine Martin. Even Gaga’s chosen ballad for the event provided an artistic cameo, with lyrics describing her lover’s “James Dean glossy eyes”.
The Bolshoi dancers, dressed by Prada and Vezzoli, joined Gaga on a raised catwalk. The limited width of this fashion-inspired stage obviously restricted their field of motion. As they swayed and pirouetted, they were reminiscent of the tiny dancers inside a music box, moving sometimes with a mechanical ticking, sometimes with a fluid grace.
Lady Gaga has always been determined her performances be considered performance art. She’s fond of quoting Andy Warhol, saying that art should be meaningful in the most shallow way possible. And like Warhol, she’s impossible to pin down: declaring high art credibility one moment, and winking that she makes “soulless electronic pop” the next. After her performance, she told the Wall Street Journal that “art is life, life is art – the question is what came first?” High art; popular culture; it’s all the same to her. And to her partner in crime, too. Franceso Vezzoli said that he wished to combine Lady Gaga and the Bolshoi Ballet as it was “the most daring, absurd thing ever.”
Absurd? Perhaps – but so was 32 flavours of Campbell Soup hanging on a gallery wall.
