Pop star and wannabe artist Miley Cyrus has found a muse in Caitlyn Jenner, turning her now-iconic Vanity Fair cover, which was shot by Annie Leibovitz, into a series of glitter-encrusted neon creations (see Annie Leibovitz Shoots First Portraits of Caitlyn Jenner). Is that puffy paint we see?
Since June 8, Cyrus has uploaded several of the collages to her Instagram account where they’ve each garnered over 200,000 likes.
Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight recently penned a review of the cover, calling Jenner brave but Leibovitz dullsville. “For all the advance buildup, the picture feels flat—a pedestrian celebrity pastiche of rather tired visual clichés. That’s too bad,” wrote Knight. “Leibovitz’s Caitlyn Jenner is a newfangled Vargas girl, one of those airbrushed cuties from the old pages of Playboy. Is that all there is?”
Could Miley’s garish, beglittered touch be the fashion-forward kick that the otherwise “flat” image needs? Or do they push the images into the worn territory of camp, also doing Jenner no favors.
Cyrus made her first foray into the art world in 2014 with “Dirty Hippie,” a series of erotic sculptures assembled from unusual materials like party hats, pineapple, and a joint, which were shown during Jeremy Scott’s show at New York Fashion Week (see Miley Cyrus Makes Erotic Sculptures).
She later took Miami by storm with a performance-cum-art show at Art Basel courtesy of Jeffrey Deitch, who called her work “Southern outsider art…very close to Mike Kelley.” (See Jeffrey Deitch Compares “Remarkable” Miley Cyrus to Mike Kelley).
Cyrus has recently been making tabloid headlines for her own recent appearance on the cover of Paper magazine, in which she poses sans clothes with a very startled-looking pig. Now that’s a cover that needs no infusion of excitement.