Monday, September 29, 2014

Madonna Ciccone, Yoko Ono, and Other “Artists”

 

Yoko Ono and the secret of her artistic success
 

Re: “Why is Modern Art So Bad?”
 

By Jerry

With the emergence of mass consumerism and technology to enhance, “singers” could be the most pretentious and untalented “artists” we have. Fabian is an early example of this. Then we had Yoko Ono as an example of a “musical artist” by association. She had previously had some notoriety as an “avant garde performance artist,” an extremely subjective form of art, if there ever was one, but somehow, simply due to having sex with a truly great songwriter, has put out albums and written songs with no discernable musical talent whatsoever.

 

Jean Harlow begat Marilyn Monroe
 

Then we had the emergence of Madonna, a poor singer and dancer who wrote “lyrics” (bad poetry), and had them set to music by real songwriters. Her talents may have been modest but she knew how to promote, she had sex with black men, and flaunted it publicly toward white men (presaging the even less talented Kardashians), used lesbianism as another marketing tool, and another way of taunting men in general. The public, however, bought what she was selling, which just shows there is truth in the saying, “You can't underestimate the public's taste,” or maybe it should be its intelligence.
 


Above and below: Jean Harlow-imitator Marilyn Monroe and Monroe-imitator, Madonna Ciccone (thanks to Anti-Madonna, which has lots more)

 

N.S.: The last time I saw or heard anything new from Madonna Ciccone, it was a video about ten years ago. In it, she was sitting on the back seat of a limousine, wearing a ten-gallon hat and a short skirt, between two black men she was cavorting with. Nothing sexual was going on, but Ciccone clearly sought to give the impression that she was part of an interracial menage a trois. The “song” was so forgettable that even while she was singing, I couldn’t recall the notes or lyrics from five seconds earlier. As Jerry noted, the whole selling point of the “song,” was that she was having sex with black men.

And yet, I find her devoid of sex appeal.

In September 1985, Playboy and Penthouse both published nude pics of Ciccone taken by professional photographers in 1978, when she was a dark-haired unknown of 19 or 20. She wasn’t a great looker, but she had a beautiful bosom, and her shape was her own. (I didn’t buy it, but I looked at the pics in one magazine at a newstand. I could have sworn that was several years later, but Google entries say otherwise.)

In 1992, Ciccone put out a photo book called Sex. If memory serves, it was sold in a wrapper, so you couldn’t look at the pictures without paying, but some photos were published somewhere as a promotion, and I found her distinctly unerotic. She was posing with dogs and/or in staged bondage, or something.

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