Photo: Katy Perry, via Instagram.
Pop superstar Katy Perry’s voracious appetite for art took her to the Art Institute of Chicago on Tuesday, where she visited the René Magritte retrospective and checked out the permanent collection long enough to take a selfie with Grant Wood’s American Gothic. Posing alongside the iconic double portrait, she wrote: “Also at the @artinstitutechi the original goths #americangothic.”
Katy Perry’s photo of René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images.
Photo: Katy Perry, via Instagram.
Her whirlwind visit, documented on Instagram, included her incisive art historical critique of Magritte’s best-known painting, The Treachery of Images (1928–29), whose depiction of a pipe accompanied by the disclaimer “This is not a pipe” she countered with a caption of her own: “Um…YES IT IS #magritte.”
Other stops on her tour of the Magritte exhibition included the 1928 painting of a hooded couple embracing, The Lovers (“This could be us but ur playin’ #magritte”) and 1945’s Rape, which moved her to proclaim: “First things first, I’m surrealist. #magritte.” She also stopped to take in Magritte’s The False Mirror (1928, above), urging her followers: “GO SEE THE MAGRITTE EXHIBIT @artinstitutechi It will blow your conventional mind & wake you up from your zombie state!”
Katy Perry with a René Magritte painting.
Photo: Katy Perry, via Instagram.
Most recently, Perry paid a visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art—although it’s unclear whether or not she actually took in some art after her ascent of the iconic Rocky Steps—and took some inspiration from Piet Mondrian for her most recent music video. Though she clearly enjoyed the Magritte retrospective during her tour stop in Chicago, she apparently did not come across the giant foot-shoe public sculptures being used to promote the exhibition.