RSS
Knot
By Ryan Battles
RSSSkeletons In My Closet
By Zoe Furlong
|Mar 05, 2011 03:32 PM
Every piece of art featured in the exhibition “Tradition Transformed: Tibetan Artists Respond” (at The Hood Museum of Art until March 15th) is captivating. But I find that whenever I pass through the exhibit, I spend most of my time staring transfixed at a large, kitschy, backlit mandala titled “O Mandala Tantric” by Kesand Lamdark. The piece is dotted (literally) with complex sexual images from the Kama Sutra, modern pornography—as well as images of death. It is a juxtaposition of opposites—sleazy porn alongside ancient tantric poses represents the East-West divide on views on eroticism, the constant confusion of the sacred and the profane. Death, represented by wrathful deities and eternally grinning skulls (which alternate between a positive and negative image of the same skull), lure the eyes to the center of the mandala and points to the central message behind the work. That message is another study in opposites: sex and death are two sides of the same coin, the beginning and the end.
But let’s not get too heady—we all need to conserve whatever brainpower we have left for finals week.
So, as I (along with 8 million other people), procrastinated by watching Lady Gaga’s new video for “Born This Way” over the last few days, I noticed some of those same juxtapositions in this new monumentally weird and glorious video. Good/Evil dichotomy? Check. Eroticism? Check. And for a song all about the circumstances around birth (and sex), there was certainly a lot of macabre imagery.
Lady Gaga has shown a clear enthusiasm for the human skeletal structure in the past—reducing her would-be lover to a charred skeleton in her “Bad Romance” video, posing nude with a skeleton for OUT magazine, performing in a ribcage-corset—you get the picture. But she takes the skeleton fetishism to a new level in “Born This Way” where she appears next to Canadian model Rick Genest, or “Zombie Boy”, who has his head and torso tattooed to resemble what’s literally on the inside. It’s… actually pretty incredible. In the video, Gaga has identical makeup, and together they make an adorable pair of tuxedoed skeletons. Aww!
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Though the crazy skeleton tuxedo dancing was a bit of a non sequitur in the video (what isn’t a non sequitur in a Lady Gaga video?), it actually seemed to be a poignant counter to the abundant (and gross) birth imagery in the earlier parts of the 7-minute video. The sweetness between Gaga and Genest, as well as the brilliance of “O Mandala Tantric”, serve as a reminder that all of life’s pleasures are fleeting—a good reason as any to savor them as enthusiastically as possible.
Inspired by this skeletal imagery? Feel like showing off your inner beauty? Here are some anatomically correct, eye-catching, and completely wearable options:
"Bone Finger" Ring by Obey
"Leg Bones" Leggings by Black Milk
"Skeleton Grunge Tee" by Wildfox Couture
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"Acid Ribcage Tee" by All Saints
"Tete a Tete Tee" by All Saints
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