June 25, 2008
Madonna Swan Song
As the last of the Madonna art is taken down to make way for "Thairin Smothers: Homo-A-Go-Go," we celebrate the end of an art show with Fenton Bailey's swan song to "Dial M For Madonna":
As the digital age has immersed us in a rising tide of the virtual, it struck us that Art could become really useful once more. Gone are the days when you could spend an afternoon contemplating the sleeve of a record. Downloading is great – until your hard drive crashes or file gets corrupted. The pop artifact is no more. Of course, that's what Pop Art was supposed to do for us. But even its latest populists like Banksy and Murakami have become prohibitively expensive.
That's why in a former porn store on Hollywood Boulevard we opened the World of Wonder Storefront Gallery. We were inspired by the East Village art scene in the '80s, when galleries like Limbo Lounge and Civilian Warfare popped up selling break-out art. By selling genuine and inexpensive pieces of art from new and upcoming artists we could give people something unique to have and to hold. So far, we've mounted group shows like "Golden Gals Gone Wild" (the Golden Girls reinterpreted), "Just Britney" (homage to Britney Spears) and now – cue drum roll – "Dial M for Madonna."
When the Beatles remarked that they were more famous than, Jesus everyone freaked out. But when you hear the name Madonna – now be honest – what first springs to mind, "Like A Virgin" or the Virgin Mary? She has become the fabric of our lives. A constant refrain. When I first arrived in New York she was an East Village scenester. Posters for her first single "Holiday" were going up all over downtown, ironic for a workaholic who doesn't know the meaning of the word vacation.
And rarely since has her drumbeat let up: Scandal, headlines, hits, cone breasts, children's books, and Kabbalah have all followed in quick succession. But where she could so easily have been an '80s flash-in-the-pan, she has somehow become a universal touchstone.
How come? When she tries to explain, it makes no sense. To hear her speak – defending herself against the pope, being inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame – she sounds brittle and defensive. Not really a star at all. Far less fun than Cyndi Lauper, whom she so dazzlingly eclipsed. But that's all part of the contradiction: She won't let her kids watch TV, but this (almost) 50-year-old mother to three spreads her legs on her latest album cover and tells us (on the first track) that her sugar is raw, sticky, and sweet.
Surely this is the secret of her success; she has alchemized the contradictions and inner conflicts that eat away at the rest of us into brand-name entertainment. We agonize about whether we are a sinner or a saint, but Madonna effortlessly appears as a virgin-whore over and over. She can boast that rare clarity of purpose shared only by the likes of Oprah and Stephen Hawking.
Many of the works in "Dial M for Madonna" pay tribute to this contradiction – none better than LA Slides In Ocean - Madonna Safe! by Louis Cannizzaro. It's so silly – that we would care more about Madonna than the fate of LA. But so true. Madonna herself apparently so liked Louis' picture that she bought the original to hang in her office. So narcissistic and knowing all at once.
Hmmm, time for a chin-stroking wrap up in which author claims exhibition sheds more light than heat on the Madonna phenomena? Not really. This immaculate collection of over 100 works by new and emerging young artists underscores the simple fact that Madonna really is as sticky and sweet as she says she is. But it is profound in a fun kind of way; in a world gone all virtual, Madonna continues to remind us that we still need to bump and grind it. We are bodies in motion, not computer heads on a stick. And all this is a rather long way of explaining why we think "Dial M for Madonna" was the most fitting show to mount in a gallery that used to be a porn store.
– Fenton Bailey
(Leda painting by Bill Georgiou)
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