W Magazine Volume #7 2019 : Kate Moss by Nikolai von Bismarck

[[Piece Of Me]]

They probably thought this was so ~edgy!~ and cool, when it just looks desperate. At least Kate looks good!

 

[GivenchyHomme]

The picture of Kate is really good. It should have been the only thing on the cover. The whole Instagram thing would have worked better in an editorial. As a cover, it's just too on the nose.

 

[AD011620]

ok... Kate wanted a cover and more followers... W didn't have enough money... so why not... nice shot but her Instagram is sooooo booooring… anyway... I guess it is what is it...
I can hear Baga Chipz screaming - Redundancy!!! :-D

 

[MON]

Every Kate Moss shoot is the same formula


1. Airbrushed to filth (M&M Option);
2. Blur / Light Effects (Jansson Option); or
3. Use a photo where she’s away from the camera (McQueen Option)

clearly they chose the 3rd one!

 

[Benn98]

Yes, but is it art? I get the 'edge', Kate doesn't actually have a personal Insta account to my knowledge, but still. What's the point of this cover?

It's sickening how this guy is climbing up the fashion ladder through. Would he have been able to book this cover if he wasn't dealing with Kate? Doubt it.

 

[vogue28]

ok... Kate wanted a cover and more followers... W didn't have enough money... so why not... nice shot but her Instagram is sooooo booooring… anyway... I guess it is what is it...
I can hear Baga Chipz screaming - Redundancy!!! :-D

In Kate's defense, the Instagram account in the cover is a fake. Kate doesn't have a personal Instagram (for the public to know about, at least) and just uses the Kate Moss Agency account for anything newsworthy.

As much as I adore Kate, this cover is a total flop - especially in comparison to Kate's previous covers of W photographed by the likes of Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott and Craig McDean. Those days of beauty, glamour and innovation, unfortunately, seems to be LONG gone.

 

[Xone]

Glad they went back to the old logo.

Don’t have much to say otherwise.

you are right! didn't notice at first glance...is this a message for Stefano? lol

 

[apple]

Yikes.. they must have taken inspiration from the cover challenge lol there was an entry with this very same concept, it was Vitto's selfie and honestly it felt much more real! I would have preferred if they had taken the concept to an extreme point, making the cover a caricature of the superficial world of instagram, using a selfie with photoshop and all, at least it woul have made people talk

 

[MON]

you are right! didn't notice at first glance...is this a message for Stefano? lol

What message? That the Stefani logo was terrible, but his creative vision was superb? This could easily be a Stefano cover.

 

[VogueGirl8910]

Glad than W bring back their old logo, but this cover is ugly & Kate looks bored.

 

[Xone]

What message? That the Stefani logo was terrible, but his creative vision was superb? This could easily be a Stefano cover.

Yeah i was talking about the logo...bringing the old back it could be interpreted that his tenure didn't happen or matter...about his vision or contents idk

 

[MissMagAddict]

A Letter from the Editor: Volume 7, The Art Issue
Sara Moonves November 1, 2019 11:20 am

In 2007, the artist Richard Prince appropriated celebrity paparazzi photos, dedicated them to himself (“To Richard Prince, Let’s Not and Say We Did, Jennifer Aniston”), and turned them into covers for W’s Art Issue. I was obsessed with those covers and thought of them often over the years. They merged the worlds of art, fashion, and pop culture seamlessly, using simple stock images.

For this year’s Art Issue, we went back to Prince. Since the rise of social media, the artist has been exploring the idea of Instagram, and for this issue he created an iconic portrait of the most recognizable supermodel in the world, Kate Moss. We asked the photographer Nikolai von Bismarck (who is also Moss’s boyfriend) to take Polaroids of her, which we then sent to Prince, who made them into an Instagram painting, which is now on the cover of W (“#katemossbyrichardprince”). I love the idea that in 2007 Prince used a paparazzi picture for the cover, and in 2019 it is an Instagram image.

One of the 2007 Art Issue covers, this one featuring Jennifer Aniston, by Richard Prince.
Photograph by Richard Prince.

Prince currently has a show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, featuring his new Instagram portraits; in “Motoring On,” the photographer Alec Soth brings to life the people leading that city’s creative renaissance. Meanwhile, in “A Muse for All Times,” the photographer Tim Walker celebrates the great model and muse Penelope Tree. On set, Tree spoke about Diana Vreeland, Richard Avedon, and David Bailey—the people who inspired her current shoot. Walker had the visionary idea of paying homage to the images of Tree created by these greats of the fashion world, and in Jenny Comita’s story we learn about Tree’s trepidation in comparing her current self to the teenager she was 50 years ago. I hope her fears turn into satisfaction once she sees the images, which Walker describes as “a big up to the beauty of age.”

W’s Design Director, Cian Browne, introduced me to the work of the German artist Tobias Zielony, who represented Germany in the Venice Biennale in 2015 and is known for his documentary photography of youth culture. For his first ever editorial fashion shoot, Zielony collaborated with the British stylist Alice Goddard; they came back with a portfolio that is as subversive as it is surprising (“Hiding in Plain Sight”).

One of the most exciting things about becoming an Editor in Chief is getting to celebrate brilliant friends doing amazing things. I met Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough 10 years ago, and since then I’ve seen them transform Proenza Schouler from a cool-kids brand to a household name. This month, Jack and Lazaro are launching Proenza Schouler White Label, a line of easy coats, perfect white jeans, and zebra-print dresses—clothes that every Proenza fan (myself included) will want for their everyday wardrobe. We sent their new collection to Tokyo to be shot by the artist Takashi Homma, and in the story by Christopher Bollen we learn that while Hernandez and McCollough always design with their New York friends in mind, their clothes transcend boundaries (“Fresh Start").

Working on the Art Issue is something I look forward to all year. I hope the pages ahead surprise you, introduce you to people you may never have heard of before, and reintroduce you to great ideas of the past.

Love,

Sara Moonves

source | wmagazine

 

[MissMagAddict]

#katemossbyrichardprince: Art for the Social Media Age
Derek Blasberg October 31, 2019 9:00 am

Richard Prince says he’s “post place.” Physically, the artist is in an Uber and on his way to LaGuardia Airport to catch a flight to Detroit. He’s talking to me on the phone and at the same time manipulating the image of Kate Moss that appears on the cover of this issue, and finalizing his captions, in a language he calls Birdtalk. Figuratively, however, Prince can be nowhere and everywhere at the same time, thanks to the power of technology. “I don’t create in any particular place anymore—not in a studio, not at a fixed address. I’m just on my phone, making art, like it’s an electronic paintbrush.”

When Prince moved to New York from Braintree, Massachusetts, in the early 1970s, the term was “post studio.” “An artist would create something outside of their studio, photograph it, and then that’s what they’d show in the gallery,” Prince says. Specifically, he’s referring to post-minimalist and land artists. “Most of us have only seen [Robert Smithson’s] Spiral Jetty or [Walter De Maria’s] The Lightning Field in photographs. I’ve never been to Michael Heizer’s house,” he says. “That’s what intrigued me about Twitter and Instagram. It’s just an updated idea of that type of practice.”



Instagram painting of Kate Moss by Richard Prince from 2014.
Artwork by Richard Prince.

Prince discovered Instagram through Twitter, which he discovered when his then-teenage daughter introduced him to Tumblr. “Twitter is editorial and Instagram is advertising,” he says. Although best known for his “Nurse” paintings, “Joke” paintings, and photographs (of photographs) of cowboys and the American West, which today sell for millions of dollars, the artist has never shied away from social media and new technology. In December 2013, he sold “The Family,” 11-by-14-inch sheets of paper printed with recent photo-text Tweets about his relatives, for $12 each at Karma’s Holiday Book Market, in New York. “The language I started using to make ‘comments’ was based on Birdtalk. Non sequitur. Gobblygook. Jokes. Oxymorons. ‘Psychic Jujitsu,’ ” he wrote on his website in 2014. “Short sentences that were funny, sweet, dumb, profound, absurd, stupid, jokey, Finnegans Wake meets Mad Magazine meets ad copy for Calvin Klein.”



Instagram painting of Kate Moss by Richard Prince from 2014.
Artwork by Richard Prince.

To create his Instagram paintings, Prince peruses his feed—“I wouldn’t say I’m addicted, but I probably do spend too much time on my phone”—then screen grabs, captions, and prints the appropriated imagery on an ink-jet in his studio. He says the process is “a variation of the silk screen and a dark room.” He’s gone through several handles, including @richardprince4 and @richardprince1234, because he has been kicked off Instagram for violating its nudity policies numerous times. (Moss’s favorite picture by Prince, which is no longer on the platform, is of a topless cowgirl on a motorcycle.) Today he uses a private account.

“When I started using Instagram, I had no idea what I was doing,” he says, adding that he ventured down some fascinating rabbit holes. (An example: the American rapper who goes by the name Junglepussy.) “Entering territory that you didn’t know anything about is exciting. It’s about a surprise, and usually you end up doing everything the wrong way—like when Warhol would misprint a silk screen. Those were always the best. That meant it was actually him doing them.”

Moss was one of the first subjects of Prince’s inaugural series of Instagram paintings, which were exhibited at the Gagosian galleryin New York in September 2014. “She didn’t know I was doing it, which was part of the attraction,” he explains. “Usually, when you do a portrait of someone they’re right in front of you. But now you don’t have to come and sit for me.”



Instagram painting of Kate Moss by Richard Prince from 2014.
Artwork by Richard Prince.

At the time, brand new to the platform, Prince didn’t realize that it wasn’t actually Moss posting pictures of herself—the image he wound up using was on the feed of one of Moss’s fans. Establishing herself as a top model in the pre-digital era, Moss shied away from social media and rarely did interviews. In 2016, she started the Kate Moss Agency in London, which represents models like Jamie Bochert and Jordan Barrett and performers including Rita Ora and Gwendoline Christie. An official Instagram account appeared at the agency’s launch, making it Moss’s first bona fide foray onto the World Wide Web. “It’s important for the talent because clients use it to cast,” she told me via an emailed interview. (Old habits die hard.) “I don’t have a personal account, as I like to keep things private.”

What appealed to Moss about this particular project was the mix of old and new, the familiar and unfamiliar. Her boyfriend, Nikolai von Bismarck, photographed her using a Polaroid camera, and then together the two of them decided which images they’d send to Prince to be reprocessed as an Instagram painting. “I love Polaroids,” Moss says. “They are old-school, but, like digital, they give you instant gratification.”

“They call it photogenic, but the way she translates [her image] is more special,” Prince says. “She’s like the girl next door who is actually next door.” Prince first photographed Moss for Artforumin 2003, and he remembers that she showed up to the shoot alone, no entourage, and was down-to-earth on set. “She didn’t act like a maestro,” he says. As the hashtag in his W cover portrait suggests—#hollyUsed2goLightly—he sees her as a modern-day Holly Golightly, the main character in Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s. “She has that attitude where she wakes up in the morning, splashes cold water on her face, and that’s how good it’s gonna get. Which is pretty good. I’m sure the same thing happens with Brad Pitt. She doesn’t need wigs, makeup, eyelashes, jewelry. She doesn’t need a stylist. That’s what I like about her.”



Moss wears a vintage Richard Prince T-shirt.
Artwork by Richard Prince; Photographed by Nikolai von Bismarck; Styled by Max Pearmain.

Prince was on his way to Detroit to install new Instagram paintings at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. Although the show, which opened in October, is the first museum exhibition of this body of work, his Instagram paintings have made their fair share of headlines in the half decade since they first appeared. There have been lawsuits about copyright infringement, some of which are still ongoing. In 2015, a woman called Missy Suicide, founder of the alternative-pinup collective the Suicide Girls, began selling her own versions of Prince’s Instagram paintings after users alerted her that some of the Suicide Girls were featured in the series. She used the same images he had lifted off Instagram to create replicas, but sold them for $90, which was 99.9 percent off the reported gallery price of $90,000. In 2017, Prince renounced an Instagram portrait of First Daughter Ivanka Trumpas an artistic protest to the incumbent president. Eight days before her father’s inauguration, he tweeted: “Not a prank. It was sold to IvankaTrump & I was paid 36k on 11/14/2014. The money has been returned. SheNowOwnsAfake.” On his website Prince wrote: “I don’t want anything to do with the Trumps. And I don’t want them to have anything to do with me. Redacting Ivanka Trump’s portrait was an honest choice between right and wrong. Right is art. Wrong is no art. The Trumps are no art.”



Workers installing the Richard Prince: Portraits exhibition, which runs October 25, 2019-January 5, 2020, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.
Photograph by Pat Elifritz.

Following his visit to Detroit, Prince is back in an Uber and coming home from LaGuardia. He is pleased with the salon-style hanging at MOCAD and the new dimensions of the paintings—some of the Birdtalk captions are so long that the canvases run the entire height of the gallery. In the car, he ponders his muses. “I’m rereading the Plimpton-Stein oral biography of Edie [Sedgwick] as we speak,” he tells me. “She flamed out. Brief. Kate, on the other hand, has remained in and out of the bright-hot, white light/white heat of the spotlight. Not an easy thing to do. Charlotte Rampling also comes to mind.” Does anyone know if she’s on Instagram?

source | wmagazine

 

[MissMagAddict]

Richard Prince Portrait Subject Slams Artist’s Instagram Appropriation: ‘Reckless, Embarrassing, and Uninformed’

@THONGRIA/INSTAGRAM

Artist Richard Prince, has once again ignited controversy with his “New Portraits” series, which involves reproducing enlarged versions of Instagram posts on canvas.

Zöe Ligon, a Detroit-based sex educator and sex-toy store owner, is decrying the usage of her image by Prince in a work that is now on view in a just-opened show of his “Portraits” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit.

In a post to her Instagram account, where she has more than 268,000 followers, Ligon writes that she did not consent to her image being used in the piece, and describes it as “a reckless, embarrassing, and uninformed critique of social media and public domain.”

MOCAD’s director, Elysia Borowy-Reeder, said in a statement that “as soon as I learned of her concern I reached out and invited her to come and speak and share concerns.” They met before the show opened. Borowy-Reeder said, “We asked if she wanted us to remove the work from the exhibition and at the time, she said that she did not want it taken down unless we removed all the works in the exhibition. MOCAD has no plans to censor the entire exhibition.”

Ligon said in an email that because the work “was already hung and shared online”—Prince posted it on social media—“taking it down felt like an attempt to get me to shut up as opposed to actually hearing why I felt that it was exploitative and harmful work.” Citing her work as a sex educator (“consent is my wheelhouse”), she said she asked that the show be removed or “or curated with a conversation that would actually invite discourse about consent in a public forum. It’s amusing that Elysia suggested that taking the show down would be ‘censoring’ the work given that it is all stolen, exploited work.”

In the original selfie, which she posted in August 2018, Ligon appears in a red bra with a caption criticizing laws that restrict sexual behavior and sex work, and writes, “I don’t care if you masturbate to my mostly naked body as long as you listen to what I have to say about sexual freedom, which inherently includes matters of class, race, gender and ability.” (To this, Prince added a caption that reads, in part, “Red Bra & 21thow others. Right now Golden State Warriors are killin it. Arugula salad.”)

In her post about Prince’s work, Ligon writes, “I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Part of the reason I take ‘sexy selfies’ is because I am reclaiming my own sexualized image. To see my image on the walls of MOCAD feels as though a picture I’ve taken of myself to reclaim my sexual body is being used to violate me all over again.”

Borowy-Reeder said in her statement that the works in the show are not for sale and that they are “are designed to prompt discussions about context, ownership, and originality.” She added, “MOCAD respects the opinions of the community that it serves and artists that are exhibited and stands by their right to express themselves freely.”

(Both Ligon’s statement on Instagram and MOCAD’s statement follow in full below. I’ve reached out to Prince, and will update this post if I hear back. As of press time, the work was on view at the museum.)

In a follow-up comment on Instagram, Ligon said, “I would like MOCAD to make a large donation to Sex Worker Outreach Project since this is a post about criminalization of sex work and harm reduction,” and added, “I’m not looking for personal justice, more so larger scale change and accountability.”

Prince first showed the “Portraits” in an exhibition at Gagosian in New York in 2014. At the time, some pictured in them raised objections to their photos being reproduced without their permission, and at least five lawsuits were filed.

One work in the series—featuring Ivanka Trump—also became the form of an unusual political protest by the artist in the wake of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, when he reportedly returned his fee to Trump, who had commissioned the piece, and disavowed the work via Twitter, writing, “This is not my work. I did not make it. I deny. I denounce. This fake art.”

Here is Ligon’s statement from Instagram:

Imagine my surprise when I saw Richard Prince tweet a 6ft inkjet printed picture of a screenshot of an Instagram post of mine hanging up in my hometown of Detroit at MOCAD. I didn’t consent to my face hanging in this art gallery.

What Richard is doing is questionably legal, but even if something is legal and “starts a dialogue” it doesn’t mean you should actually do it. Not all legal things are ethical. This, in my opinion, is a reckless, embarrassing, and uninformed critique of social media and public domain. This is appropriation artwork. This isn’t progressive, this isn’t even subversive. Maybe it was when he began doing this in 1977, but in 2019 it’s tone deaf.

I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Part of the reason I take “sexy selfies” is because I am reclaiming my own sexualized image. To see my image on the walls of MOCAD feels as though a picture I’ve taken of myself to reclaim my sexual body is being used to violate me all over again. Given that millions of people are sexually assaulted each year, I imagine I’m not the only one who feels this work is a violation of boundaries on a much deeper level.

And here is MOCAD’s statement:

Like many contemporary cultural institutions, MOCAD has always been a space for the playing out of disparate and conflicting ideas. We state in our mission that we fuel critical dialogue, we are proud of the critical and important work we are doing to present progressive and challenging artists and exhibitions for vast audiences. The works in the exhibition are not for sale, and are designed to prompt discussions about context, ownership, and originality–questions first asked in an institutional setting over 100 years ago by Marcel Duchamp, and more pressing than ever in our world of social media and big data. We invite audience/visitors to our free public programs to engage in the dialogue. MOCAD presents over 17 exhibitions and over 250 free public programs a year.

A talk by Brian Wallis on the work of Richard Prince will be held on Nov. 7 with a community dinner to follow, furthering the discussion. RSVP would be greatly appreciated.

The point of the exhibition is to speak about these issues of ownership and ask these questions. This is a very relevant discussion. Is social media empowering people or co-opting artistic production? Where do our expectations and perceptions around privacy and consent lead us when using social media? What are you to consenting to when posting? Is all photography exploitive?

MOCAD respects the opinions of the community that it serves and artists that are exhibited and stands by their right to express themselves freely. With regard to the subject of the portrait, as soon as I learned of her concern I reached out and invited her to come and speak and share concerns. We met before the show opened to the public at the Museum. We asked if she wanted us to remove the work from the exhibition and at the time, she said that she did not want it taken down unless we removed all the works in the exhibition. MOCAD has no plans to censor the entire exhibition.

Anyone who undertakes a Richard Prince show understands that some visitors may have difficulty with the work. We invite their perspectives and further discussions about Richard’s artwork.

source | artnews

 

[aracic]

Oh wow, they actually display this ''art'' in museums? LOL I understand art is subjective, but could someone please explain to me what's artistic about a fictional Instagram post?

 

[Stavros]

Sad, just sad.

 

[lewak]

I was thinking 3 years but yeah it’s been awhile. Lol



“Who did what when matters.”

—Richard Prince

5 years ago
First show at Gagosian NYC and straight on to the cover of POP. I have that issue... Grimes from a real Instagram post of hers. Strange Moonves doesn't remember that as she contributed to POP at that time.....

 

[mistress_f]

i'm so confused... is this really 2019?
richard prince was doing these instagram prints in 2015.... and it was already tired back then. wtf?

 

[gazebo]

Yeh...Art is dead just like fashion.
Now here's a cover-line.

 

[Xone]

From W's Instagram profile.