The contributions and influence of American artist Madonna (born 1958) in the landscape of underground and contemporary arts have been documented by a variety of sources such as art publications, scholars and art critics. As her footprints in the arts are lesser-known compared to her other roles, this led a contributor from W to conclude that both her impact and influence in the art world have been "made almost entirely behind the scenes". She is noted for taking inspiration from various painters in her career. Once called a "continuous multi-media art project" by Jon Pareles in 1990, art critics and academics have noted she condenses fashion, dance, photography, sculpture, cinema, music, video and painting in her own artwork.
Madonna's interest in the arts began in her early life. 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. Around that time, Madonna's graffiti tag was "Boy Toy", which later used in her professional career, and immortalized their friendship in the song "Graffiti Heart".
Madonna is an art collector, included among Art & Antiques 100 Biggest Collectors. She has been also known as an "art supporter" and has used art for charity. In 2001, Madonna lent her Self-Portrait with Monkey by Frida Kahlo at the Tate Modern, which was the first British exhibition dedicated to Kahlo. Madonna sponsored various art exhibitions of contemporary artists such as Basquiat, Cindy Sherman and Tina Modotti. 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.
Throughout her career, her visuals and artistry have attracted both celebratory and derogatory commentaries. Late-twentieth-century views on Madonna were a constant amid low and high culture, with some labeling her a modernist. By the next century, Dahlia Schweitzer said that many critics have long resisted using the words "Madonna" and "artistic" in the same sentence, and for supporters like art historian Kyra Belán, she is a "symbol for female achievement" in different art forms. She was referred to as a contemporary gesamtkunstwerk and the art-pop queen, while American performing artist David Blaine said that perhaps she "is herself her own greatest work of art". Her influence has been noted in a number of contemporary artists, including Silvia Prada, Trisha Baga and Pegasus. Various artists have depicted Madonna either once or multiple times, including Peter Howson, Andrew Logan, Sebastian Krüger and Al Hirschfeld. Madonna's likeness and some of her own works have also been displayed in museums and art galleries exhibitions around the world, including the video of "Bedtime Story", which became part of Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection.
Background Formative years
Madonna's background with the arts and its influence on her future career have been well-documented. In a conversation with curator Vince Aletti in 1999, she said her interest in art started when she was a child. She visited the Detroit Institute of Arts, where she learned about Frida Kahlo and started reading about her. Madonna also mentioned her Catholic education, saying "there's art everywhere" in the churches, "so you get introduced to it that way".
From early on, Madonna's father encouraged his children to take classes related to art disciplines. He wanted Madonna to take piano lessons, and while music was one of her motivations and goals, the piano was not for her. She had a friend who was taking ballet lessons, and she convinced her father to let her take ballet instead of piano. For Madonna, dance was a gateway for discovery of other arts in which she has maintained a lifelong interest, according to biographer Carol Gnojewski. In performing arts school, she studied dance, music theory and art history. She also took a Shakespearean course.
At Rochester School of Ballet, she met instructor Christopher Flynn, who took a special interest in helping her succeed. Flynn was impressed by her talent and ambition and took it upon himself to become her mentor, exposing her to Detroit's museums, operas, concerts, art galleries, and fashion shows. Her tastes broadened to include classical music, Pre-Raphaelite painters, and poets.
1970s and arrival to New York City
Madonna pursued a career in modern dance, moving to New York City in the late 1970s. She attended numerous museums for free, and worked as an nude art model at art schools and for photographers such as Martin Schreiber and Lee Friedlander. This brought her into contact with painters and photographers. Madonna would later declare: "People painted me all the time". She briefly took classes on photography, painting and drawing.
While pursuing her dance career, Madonna participated in the 1978 American Dance Festival at Duke University in Durham. Richard Maschal, who interviewed her for The Charlotte Observer that year, described the then-dance student as "what the American Dance Festival is about". During the festival she also met Pearl Lang, who later became her dance mentor and helped her to get a job at the Russian Tea Room. A year later, she successfully auditioned to perform in Paris with French disco artist Patrick Hernandez as his backup singer and dancer. She was selected by Fernandez, who was impressed by her stage presence, from an audition attended by 1,500 people. Hernandez and his team took interest in grooming her as a star; her Parisian patrons intended to develop and market Madonna as a disco singer, paying her expenses, including further classes for singing, dancing and conversational French lessons. Hernandez claims that his fame motivated Madonna, as he and his friends "succeeded" in convincing her that she could become a major recording star. She grew deeply dissatisfied with the pace of her career as dictated by her managers, and she did not prefer disco music. Then she returned to New York City.
Personal relationships
Outlet Contemporary Art explained that Madonna made her first connection with the local art scene of New York in clubs located on the Lower East Side and SoHo, including Danceteria, The Limelight, The Roxy, Funhouse, Mudd Club and the Paradise Garage, frequented by School of Visual Arts artists and others public figures. She befriended various painters, graffiti and visual artists such as Keith Haring, Futura 2000, Fab Five Freddy and Daze. In 1978, she met graffiti artist Norris Burroughs, with whom she had a brief relationship.
Artist Martin Burgoyne was her roommate on the Lower East Side and became her best friend. In an interview with Austin Scaggs, she said a roommate introduced her to Haring, but she was already aware of his art. Her then boyfriend Jean-Michel Basquiat introduced Madonna to Andy Warhol, Glenn O'Brien, and Larry Gagosian. Gagosian recalled that Basquiat said, "She'll be the biggest pop star in the world". O'Brien later edited Madonna's 1992 book Sex and worked with her on the book documenting her The Girlie Show tour, published in 1994. Madonna met Darlene Lutz, who became her personal art advisor from 1983 to 2004, through O'Brien.
In an interview with American artist David Blaine in 2014, Madonna talked about the close relationship she had with Burgoyne, Haring and Basquiat, as they hung out together with Warhol joining them sometimes. She wrote an article for The Guardian in 1996 discussing her relationship with Basquiat, and wrote about her friendship with Haring in Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography (1992) by art critic John Gruen. Madonna further immortalized their friendship in the song "Graffiti Heart" from her 2015 album, Rebel Heart. She is also mentioned in Warhol's diary The Andy Warhol Diaries. In 2019, Sky Arts' Urban Myths dedicated an episode entitled Madonna & Basquiat to their relationship.
During the time spent with her graffiti artist friends in New York, Madonna used the graffiti tag "Boy Toy", making her own graffiti on walks, subways or sidewalks. The moniker referred to one of her boyfriends, RP3, a subway scratchitti artist who also used the tag and gave it to her. She later used it as the name of her copyright company, as well as on the belt buckle of a dress worn during her Like a Virgin era.
Implementation and influence in her work
Madonna's early visuals and presentation were often described as pop art. In the 1990s, critic Martha Bayles said she cultivated a "heavy-duty pop art image". Editor Paul Flynn called her "a pop artist in the Warholian sense of the word", while in 1997 John R. May described her a "successful piece of pop art" and as "a splendor formae of aesthetic". In Pastiche: Cultural Memory in Art, Film, Literature (2001), Ingeborg Hoesterey asserts: "Madonna came from the beginning very much from the plastic arts. When she splashed onto the music scene, she did so by quoting the kitsch of devotional Virgin artifacts that (Mexican) figurative painters critiqued in the seventies".
Madonna was considered both a visual musical artist and performer rather than a musician, with Canadian scholar Karlene Faith commenting in the late 1990s about "her abundant talent as a visual artist". Thomas Harrison, of the University of Central Florida, recognized various female artists before Madonna but expressed that she "took it to a whole other level" by always embracing the visual aspects of performance. Tony Clayton-Lea of The Irish Times even regarded Madonna as "the first female pop star to fully engage with the visual elements of her art".
Her "knowledge" was commented on by various during the height of her career. In 2000, American Photos editor-in-chief David Schonauer commented that she is perhaps "one of the most visually savvy humans on earth". From John A. Walker to Vince Aletti, critics regarded her as "knowledgeable" in references and photography. 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. In 1994, Richard R. Burt cites a reporter who saw her as an "astute if untrained art critic". Los Angeles Times critic Patrick Goldstein once commented about her attendance at "Degenerate Art" (1991) held in Los Angeles County Museum of Art, "she's savvy enough" but her "interests are largely visual". Madonna herself declared that her primarily interests in art are "suffering, and irony and a certain bizarre sense of humour".
Influences for Madonna
Madonna is reported to be often inspired by the visual artists she collects. She once stated: "Every video I've done has been inspired by some painting or work of art". Decades noted art as being part of her personal life and professional career. In 2020, she said: "Art has kept me alive".
A number of observers have commented about specific artists. Scholar Kocku von Stuckrad recalls how Frida Kahlo became her role model. Some other scholars, including Pamela Robertson from the University of Notre Dame, and Georges-Claude Guilbert describes she captured the "full force of Warhol" and described him as the "virtual father of Madonna", respectively. Scholars Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar agree that "the work of Cindy Sherman prefigured Madonna's style in the art world". In Understand Postmodernism: Teach Yourself (2010), Glenn Ward said work of the pair can be "compared". A portrait of Lee Miller kissing another woman by Man Ray that she owns, inspired her and encouraged the use of lesbian imagery.