Is Kanye West an artist or just a click-bait provocateur?
A stream of shock and criticism has followed the release of Kanye West's "Famous" music video since its premiere last weekend.
This thought-provoking piece is "a comment on fame," West said in an interview with Vanity Fair. However, the video's underlying commentary may have been buried under a discussion on defining art.
"Famous" first stirred up controversy during West's New York Fashion Week show debuting both YEEZY Season 3 and The Life of Pablo.
His lyric: "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that b**ch famous" began a global conversation on the misogyny of attributing a woman's success to a man. In response, Swift shut down this notion during her 2016 GRAMMY acceptance speech.
West's music video takes this shock value and rides it to the next level. The video shows the rapper and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, lying naked in a bed with 10 other famous individuals, including Swift. The video lies somewhere on the border between pornography and performance art. West forces his viewers to experience the unease of viewing the exposed bodies of celebrities from politics and pop culture – without their consent.
Girls creator and close friend of Swift, Lena Dunham, took to Facebook to share her reaction:
"... the Famous video is one of the more disturbing 'artistic' efforts in recent memory.
Let's break it down: at the same time Brock Turner is getting off with a light tap for raping an unconscious woman and photographing her breasts for a group chat... As assaults are Periscoped across the web and girls commit suicide after being exposed in ways they never imagined... While Bill Cosby's crimes are still being uncovered and understood as traumas for the women he assaulted but also massive bruises to our national consciousness... Now I have to see the prone, unconscious, waxy bodies of famous women, twisted like they've been drugged and chucked aside at a rager? It gives me such a sickening sense of dis-ease."
Dunham's interpretation, however, is just that – an interpretation. West himself stated his explicit intention to remove sexuality from the images: "We were very careful with shots that had [something] sexual to take them out."
As a result of provoking these emotions of disgust, it seems West actually succeeds in making his audience consider the moral implications of celebrity voyeurism.
Vincent Desiderio, the artist whose work inspired the video, shared his reaction to the New York Times:
"As I’m watching the thing, they’re smiling and filming my response, and all of a sudden, I realized that it is my 'Sleep' painting: 'Holy [expletive]! Oh my God!' I was really speechless. Kanye saw things in it that I don’t know how he could’ve seen. Kanye is truly an artist. Talking to him was like speaking to any of my peers in the art world — actually, more like talking to the brightest art students that have their eyes wide open."
Watch the video on TIDAL here and weigh in. Is it art? Does the provocative nature of the piece make it click-bait, or does it serve the intended commentary? Comment below and let us know.