William Burroughs shoots Amy Winehouse (as art)
Artist Marco Perego sculpted a lifesize scene of Amy Winehouse shot dead in the head. William Burroughs is holding the shotgun. The installation, titled "The Only Good Rock Star Is A Dead Rock Star," is on view at Half Gallery in New York City until January 23, 2009. "Shocking tribute to Amy Winehouse" (3news.co.nz, thanks Tara McGinley!)
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Disgusting.
Hilarious.
I'm confused.
That's pretty fucked up. I know that it's probably supposed to be some sort of arch metacommentary about society's obsession with self-destructive celebrities and blah blah blah, but the sad thing is, it's not even really shocking any more.
Wha?
So I assume this is William S. Burroughs of writing fame? He supposedly did kill his wife with a pistol in Mexico. Trying to shoot an apple off her head...or so the story goes...
I'm just saying... if this were a high-school kid instead of a "famous artist," he'd be expelled and on his way to jail for being a terrorist or something.
"Picture of Pope with Vagina."
See, this stuff is easy.
Didn't Burroughs give Cobain the brush off when Nirvana was at the height of its stardom?
Winehouse > Rockstar!!!
Q: Why is this an impossibility?
A: One must have a brain in order to have their brains blown out. Whinehohouse fried hers long ago.
Still, it's a fun envisionment of a dream...:-)
The "Shocking tribute" link appears to be linking back to this page.
OM @9: That remark seems totally uncalled for, I have to say.
Ok, lets try this again:
Winehouse not equal to Rockstar!!!
d00d j00r link is all NOOOO.
Om, Om, charity, charity.
Totally tasteless and crass, but very amusing none the less.
I've met Ms. Winehouse, and while she is distinctly mental, there is all sorts of stereotypical stuff going on; she is a walking cliche.
While I really quite like the commentary implied from Burroughs, and the righteous smiting element, I can't help but feel a little awkward when I picture Amy seeing this.
strange what a little proximity does for ones cynicism.
Always did like William S. Burroughs.
"Why are we here? We are here to go. We are here to into space." -WSB
I've always loved that snip from him, but when he gets wrapped up in firearms, I tune out. I also would have never thought to pair those two up. Strange.
Amm..I google the link, and this is what came out..I mean the link that is not working in the article:
http://www.3news.co.nz/Shocking-tribute-to-Amy-Winehouse/tabid/418/articleID/80758/cat/55/Default.aspx
I hope it is the one (link) they wanted to give
Gotta love Kiwi's
'She may be did'
'did what?'
I'm with #5.
It should be Edgar Rice Burroughs holding the shotgun. That'd add a WTF factor that would make it, on the whole, funnier.
Those shock artists just bore me to death.
cn y gys wthdrw ths r smthng? ts stpd nd brng.
Poor Amy Wino, you'll have her fans foaming at the mouth and slobbering on us here pretty quick. Sorry folks, she has a death wish.
amy comments :-)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihFzr8QPfOg#t=2m07s
(well not really)
while not wanting to seem overly fussy it is apparent that m. sculptor has no experience with shotguns.
Not to quibble (or appear to be a gun nut) but that's most likely a rifle, not a shotgun he's holding. If blasted in the head with a shotgun, she probably wouldn't look much like Amy Winehouse anymore (except for the tattoos). I might add, that's an amazing likeness of her, disturbingly so, which obviously is the point.
mr dandy you're right. i think i have identified which rifle it is
http://cornershot.com/
http://puttytwist.com/
Check it out - a Portland, OR artist. She does some of the wine labels for Hip Chicks do Wine (http://www.hipchicksdowine.com/). I am trying to find out if she has any shows/displays. I'll post again, later.
It's so lame for an artist to plunk a celebrity knocking on deaths door into their work to make a buck. It's not great art, and the artist knows it, but at least it'll make a few bucks more than anything else they've made because it rides the coattails of burroughs and winehouse. and hey, if winehouse kicks the bucket, that can't hurt either. I will say this though, this piece is miles ahead of the paintings Perego did concerning britney spears' impact on female body image, and let us not forget the lessons learned from her Nickelback portrait series.
Burroughs used a revolver, although I would guess that a stereotypical New York artist is likely to care even less about factual accuracy than firearms.
I understand the criticism of the piece, but seriously, some black meat and a couple of Interzone boys and it all makes perfect sense.
And that marks the only bit of winehouse news I'll ever care about for a few seconds or less.
Please, correct me if i am wrong: this is reporting on a sculpture essentially glamorizing the murder of a woman, yes? A woman with a drug addiction killed not by her actions but by a man with a gun? And this is a warning to her to change her ways, by which is apparently hanging out with William Burroughs. because, he shot her in the head. Oh, I gotcha. Huh, sounds misogynistic.
This is a cultural criticism alright. Just not in the way it was intended.
Winehouse isn't much of a rockstar
oh wait the crack rocks I see now nevermind
I think the installation would be better if it were Amy Winehouse in a blender, where the viewer can turn on the blender - it would make a much more meaningful points about the idea of celebrity and schlock, er, shock art.
Wait. This hasn't gotten on TMZ yet??
Jay Radical @33: The "man with a gun" is a man quite famous for his own drug addiction and for writing about it, so there's a layer of, perhaps, heavy-handed symbolism there.
why shoot her she might actually kill herself any day with drug overdose
I'm still not impressed. Besides thinking it is misogynistic (which I do), it's also unoriginal in that while searching for the article, I found an article from May about someone else's dead Amy Winehouse art project. Already been done!
I did a search on violent advertising and women and came across a well-written op-ed piece from the New York Times on politics and misogyny. http://tinyurl.com/ywmr7a I especially liked what he said here: "The cable news channels revel in stories about women (almost always young and attractive) who come to a gruesome end at the hands of violent men. The stories seldom, if ever, raise the issue of misogyny, which permeates not just the crimes themselves, but the coverage as well."
I hope no one would say this, but I know one could argue, oh, she's not attractive, but as seen in the photos of the sculpture, her cleavage is well-defined and quite noticeable.
This post talks about 2007's controversial America's Next Top Model episode in which the competing models were photographed as victims in various violent crime scenes. http://pizzadiavola.wordpress.com/2008/01/15/violence-in-advertising/ The photos are very graphic, and the comments made by the judges really drove it home for me. 'You're dead, but not sexy enough!' 'She looks too dead!' What?
Bottom line: I don't see this as original, but instead just another example of violence against women being fetishized and glamorized.
Art? Or humanitarianism?
Huh. It's only a few blocks from my apartment. Maybe I'll go by and see it.
Hrmm. I wouldn't really call Amy Winehouse a rock star. But I guess this is like... Some sort of poignant commentary on pop culture? If so, I'm happy to say I don't get it.