When Lady Gaga was at SXSW, she employed Millie Brown to puke all over her. Roman Shower thing? Pompous arthouse fetishism? Who knows. But apparently, in her keynote speech, Gaga found a way to tie that in to Martin Luther King Jr. “I had a dream! That one chick barfed on another chick for a fake nacho chip company. Then I woke up and I was too freaked out to go back to sleep. Wonder what it means …” Rolling Stone reports …
Speaking to the effect it had online, she said, “It was just exciting seeing people talking about performance art on the Internet and debating about whether it’s art or not. We really just did it because we believe in the performance and we believe in what it meant to the song [‘Swine’].” Regarding her artistic vision and collaborating with Brown, Gaga said, “I am so deeply passionate about any person that has an artistic spirit, any person that has a talent that they believe in no matter how crazy the idea is. You never know where that crazy idea might lead you. Martin Luther King believed that he could start a revolution without violence. Andy Warhol believed he could turn a soup can into art. Sometimes things that are really strange can save the world.
“I’m not saying vomit is going to change the world,” she continued, adding that it was “about us really respecting each other artists.” Then, again, she said, “Artpop.”
Look, I’ll be the first to admit that what Gaga does is art. What Brown does is art. They both have strong points of view and they both have a tilt that makes them stand out. But at the same time, I get the feeling that Gaga has a habit of flying off the handle when it comes to defining art. I mean, she creates music. She infuses it with ideas and opinions. THAT is what makes it art. What doesn’t make it art when she points at it and says “ART! ART! ART!” Or when she dresses up like paintings or gets other artists to puke on her. You were already an artist to begin with. Now you’re just going overboard.