The video crops Benoist’s portrait so that the servant’s exposed breast is no longer visible. Kadish, a scholar on French slavery, has written that, while some have read the woman in Benoist’s painting as an allegory for the republic (she is surrounded by the tricolor) or noted her resolute gaze, the art historian Griselda Pollock has compared the image to that of a scene in a slave auction, and the art historian Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby has written that its offensive title, which dehumanizes the sitter, “exercises a form of mastery or subordination: the sitter is robbed, like a slave, of her person’s property.” Possibly showing a servant brought to France from the Antilles by Benoist’s brother-in-law, it was painted in 1800, after the abolition of slavery by France but just as Napoleon was working to reinstate it in the nation’s colonies.ĭoris Y. Perhaps the most intriguing inclusion is a close-up shot of Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s Portrait of a Negress (1800) near the end of the video. Occasionally the lyrics and paintings cleverly sync up, too, as when Beyoncé sings, “Sippin’ my favorite alcohol/Got me so lit I need Tylenol” while details of wine being generously poured in Veronese’s The Wedding at Cana (1563) flash on screen. 2600 B.C.), the Venus de Milo (101 B.C.), The Winged Victory of Samothrace (190 B.C.), and David’s Coronation of Napoleon (1805–07), their movements and poses sometimes loosely mirroring those of figures in the artworks. The leading couple and their accompanying dancers also spend time with iconic works like the Great Sphinx of Tanis (ca. A line hundreds-deep waited for over an hour to check items into lockers, while other patrons were tossing bags into bushes hoping they’d be there on the way out from the can’t-miss concert event.Jacques-Louis David’s Coronation of Napoleon (1805–07). Many people missed all of that excitement, however, stuck outside the venue scrambling to get rid of bags and purses due to Soldier Field’s adherence to NFL “clear bag policy,” which caught them by surprise. The setup included movable stages, double runways with built-in treadmills, and a massive widescreen that played cinematic montages and home videos of the couple with their three children.Ĭhance the Rapper, that often and beloved concert crasher, appeared during opener DJ Khaled’s set. Symbolism was just one of the visual cues in this sensory show that was part concert, part live theater, part dance performance, part movie. Though she had the ground shaking during “Drunk In Love” and “Formation,” and had an actual (yet accidental) mic drop during “Run The World (Girls),” she was at her finest on the heartbreaker “Resentment,” sung while sitting on the floor and wearing what looked interestingly like a wedding dress. Of the two, Beyonce delivered the stronger performance - as much for her unmatched dance-offs and runway-worthy fashion choices (including a leather corset by Mugler, holographic ensemble by Balmain and Queen-worthy purple cape from Dundas), but also for her gut-wrenching honesty. After the male bravado of “99 Problems,” you could ostensibly feel the anger as Beyonce clapped back with “Ring The Alarm.” When Jay-Z wrapped up his guilt omission in “Family Feud,” Beyonce scoffed with “Upgrade U.” And as Jay-Z says on “4:44,” this still feels like “healing in real time,” you have to wonder just how awkward it is for him to be chastised night after night until the tour wraps in October. When they weren’t collaborating on numbers, Beyonce and Jay-Z took turns delivering snapshots of their solo hits, all of it adding up to 43 songs carefully curated to evolve like a heated conversation.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |