Lady Gaga Embraces Art World
【JON PARELES／REVIEW／聯合報／陳世欽譯】
In “Artpop,” her third fulllength studio album , Lady Gaga pivots to align herself with the art world, singing, “Pop culture was in art, now art’s in pop culture, in me.”
My misgivings started then. Wasn’t she an artist already?
Lady Gaga, born Stefani Germanotta, has certainly worked like one, mingling the generalized and the personal, the accessible and the inexplicable, the attention-getting and the head-scratching, the market-savvy and the strange. As strong as her commercial imperatives were, they only emboldened her eccentric streak.
Lady Gaga didn’t separate pop culture and art when she emerged. Like the best pop stars, she made the mass media her gallery space. Atop her music in video clips and public appearances, she piled on a nonstop fashion show and a public image that expanded to embrace misfit, outcast, unappreciated and sexually nonconformist “little monsters,” as she named her fans.
But “Artpop,” released November 11, positions her in a more rarefied zone: with performance and gallery artists.
The cover of “Artpop” is a sculpture of a blond Lady Gaga cupping her breasts and holding a big shiny blue sphere between her legs. It’s by the pop artist Jeff Koons . It’s a portrait of a pop star by an art star — but it’s stiff and detached.
Lady Gaga has also announced collaborations with avant-garde elders like the theater artist Robert Wilson and the performance artist Marina Abramovic. On her Facebook page, Lady Gaga wrote that “Artpop” would be released with an app that she described as “a musical and visual engineering system that combines music, art, fashion and technology with a new interactive worldwide community — ‘the auras.’ ”
The music on “Artpop” isn’t as convoluted. “My artpop could mean anything,” Lady Gaga sings in the title song, and most of the time, it means putting the four-on-the-floor thrust of mainstream club music behind the kind of big pop hooks that made her a superstar.
Lady Gaga conquered the world with “The Fame,” her 2008 album of rocked-up dance tunes, and its EP sequel, “The Fame Monster,” in 2009. Then her 2011 “Born This Way” made its predecessors sound temperate.
Now with “Artpop,” Lady Gaga turns oddly defensive.
In the title song, she dismisses the notion of a commercial downturn, singing, “I tried to sell myself but I am really laughing/ Because I just love the music not the bling.”
For much of the album, “Artpop” also seems to be working off a checklist that Lady Gaga chants in “Aura”: “tech dance sex art pop.” Not on the checklist, but definitely on the agenda for trademark reinforcement, are songs about clothes.
What’s missing from too much of “Artpop” is Lady Gaga’s old conviction that pop, in its 21stcentury configuration as music plus video plus social media plus celebrity, could tell every story she wanted to tell. Her stage spectaculars have already built arty superstructures on her songs: sexy, disruptive, funny, unsettling ones. Validation from the fine-arts world — a much more elitist, insular place than pop’s mass market — shouldn’t matter anywhere nearly as much as stirring the passions of the little monsters.
中譯
女神卡卡在第三張錄音室正規專輯「Artpop」裡向藝術世界靠攏，唱道，「流行文化曾在藝術中。現在，藝術在流行文化中，在我之中」。
我開始納悶。她不已經是個藝術家了嗎？
本名史蒂芬妮‧傑曼諾達的女神卡卡當然已如藝術家般工作。她融合概括化與個人化、可接近與難以理解、引起注意與令人摸不著頭緒、瞭解市場與生疏。她的商業需求很強烈，卻只會使她的古怪氣質更大膽。
卡卡出道時並未區隔流行文化與藝術。正如頂尖流行音樂巨星，她使大眾媒體成為她的展示空間。在錄製的影片與現場演出中，她展演不間斷的時裝秀與公眾形象，並擴大到包括與周圍環境格格不入、被摒棄與性叛逆的「小怪獸」。這是她對粉絲的稱呼。
然而11日發行的Artpop使她處於一種比較純化的位置：配合表演與畫廊藝術家。Artpop的封面是金髮的卡卡兩手併成杯狀置於胸前，兩腿之間放著一個閃亮的藍色大球體。它出自流行藝術家昆斯之手，是流行音樂巨星在流行文化巨星手中呈現的形象，卻僵硬而疏離。
卡卡還宣布與前衛老前輩合作的計畫，包括劇場藝術家威爾森與表演藝術家瑪莉娜‧阿布拉莫維契。她在臉書首頁中表示，與Artpop同時發行的一個應用程式是「音樂與視覺的工程系統，結合音樂、藝術、時尚、科技與全球性的新互動社群：「auras」。
Artpop的音樂並不那麼費解。卡卡在主題歌中唱道，「我的artpop可能意味一切」。多數時候，它意味把主流俱樂部四四拍音樂的巨大推力拋在使她成為超級巨星的巨大流行音樂魅惑之後。
卡卡曾以2008年的搖滾舞曲專輯「The Fame」與2009年的「The Fame Monster」征服全世界。她2011年推出的「Born This Way 」使之前的專輯顯得相當溫和。
推出Artpop的卡卡突然變得要為自己辯解。她在主題歌中駁斥票房走下坡的說法，唱道，「我試著把自己賣出去，但我真的在笑／因為我就是熱愛音樂而不是閃亮華麗」。
Artpop似乎漸漸消除女神卡卡在「Aura」中吟唱的一張檢查清單：「科技、舞蹈、性、藝術、流行音樂」。不在清單內，卻絕對列為商標強化議題的是有關服裝的歌曲。
不見於Artpop的是卡卡的舊信念：21世紀的流行音樂兼具音樂、影像、社群媒體與名人的元素，可以敘述她想說的每一則故事。可觀的舞台表現已賦予她的歌曲附庸風雅的超級結構：性感、具有破壞性、有趣、令人不安。藝術界比流行音樂的大眾市場更具有精英色彩，而且更封閉，它的肯定沒有如何激起小怪獸們的熱情來得重要。
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