In a similar way, West’s latest album is also a portrait, although this time a more literal one with direct representation of the artist himself. Some of you may recall West’s collaboration with Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami on Graduation (2007) where he asked the artist to help represent his alter-ego “dropout bear” chased by demons and moving through obstacles to make it to his graduation ceremony.

The first concerns the controversial art work he chose to feature on the album itself (see image at top of post), and the second relates to the half hour music video-or “art film” as West calls it- that he produced to feature all nine of the album’s songs. Over the past week, the questions of West’s artistic integrity have once again surfaced with two separate but related visual arts projects that form part of the release of his fifth studio album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. But is this perhaps just part of his performance? Can we actually take Kanye West's aesthetic vision seriously?

Kanye West.” Simply Googling his name immediately results in stories of West’s outrageous behaviour-especially it seems at music award shows- where West has made a spectacle of himself attempting to capture audience attention at the expense of his colleagues. But it is also an aesthetic that I would argue has mostly been deployed without much criticality and often to extend and magnify what many also argue is one giant vanity project celebrating (and profiting from) all that is “Mr.

He did after all attend the American Academy of Art in Chicago briefly before dropping out to focus on his career, a theme that runs all the way through the conceptual grounding of his music in albums titled The College Dropout (2004), Late Registration (2005), and Graduation (2007). As such, it is an aesthetic that is recognizable to many in the art world as evidence of West’s engagement and understanding of many of its core questions. Much like Lady Gaga, hip hop artist Kanye West has positioned himself as something of a performance artist, establishing a kind of carefully honed visual aesthetic that incorporates references to both the world of contemporary art and the art of the historical avant-garde. One of five album covers (this one a portrait of Kanye West) reportedly chosenįor the hip hop artist's newest album.

Kanye west dark fantasy scale