Madonna loves to skirt the line between edgy, uncomfortable, and downright disgusting. And some fans think she might’ve crossed over it with a new magazine cover shoot. Working on a shot for the cover of V Magazine, Madonna apparently thought a good conceit for the scene would be recreating the bedroom where Marilyn Monroe was found dead. For those who might be unaware, Monroe tragically died at age 36 of a drug overdose when she took too many sleeping pills.
https://twitter.com/MikeSington/status/1454119678951845900
While the connection between the two has been well-established in Madonna’s art in the past, this gruesome depiction takes it to a whole new level. Sure, the “Material Girl” inspiration from Monroe performing “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” made sense, and there’s an obvious similarity between the two, appearance-wise. It’s a great Halloween costume, as her photos below reveal:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CVod9b6vKQW/
But the emphasis is more on one of the three covers that V ended up choosing:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CVnZpFjJUnx/
Photographer Steven Klein defended his artistic choices, saying the shoot was about the relationship between photographer and subject. “We were not interested in recreating the images exactly,” he said in a press release. “But more importantly, we wanted to explore the relationship between photographer and subject. Both the friendship and the artistic process, and how art can imitate life and vice versa. When I sent Madonna the photos, she was really taken by the incandescent fragility of Marilyn at that moment in her life. We decided to find a hotel suite and try to capture the liaison between a star and the camera, the mystery, and magic of this creative collaboration.”
Not sure if the scene of someone’s death by overdose is part of the mystery and magic he’s talking about, but critics seem to have a fair point for this one.
