They've also created three children, Blue Ivy, who was born in 2012, and their twins Rumi and Sir, born in 2017.

She is the modern image of victory over the warfare placed on her body, career, intellect, personal life having succeeded, she can now dress like “Winged Victory” and, in a sense, pass along her victories to the women who dance on the steps in front of her.Beyoncé and Jay-Z have been together for over 20 years, and their relationship has produced more art than anyone could have anticipated. All of these women come together and move as one being, with Beyoncé presiding over them all. That endowment of power to a female body is then emulated in the female bodies that stand before it in present day, through Beyoncé and her troupe of female dancers. The towering relic from the Hellenistic period is, as the Louvre’s description notes, intensely dramatic and glorifies the female body in connection with something traditionally masculine (victory in war). According to the Louvre website for the piece, the statue depicts Nike, and was likely created to commemorate a naval victory by the Rhodians (who hail from Rhodes, part of the Dodecanese island group in Greece). Implying triumph and power, the statue has endured over centuries, and The Carters imply just as much by once again standing in front of it, in perhaps a nod to their own triumph and the power they’ve achieved. It’s also no accident that the “Winged Victory of Samothrace” statue is frequently seen in “APESHIT”. “WINGED VICTORY OF SAMOTHRACE” (2ND CENTURY BC) Humans have spent centuries trying to unpack the enigma of the “Mona Lisa” and still continue to do so to this day do you really think you can figure out The Carters in a day? They know that we’ll spend hours analysing them and their work, attempting to find meaning in their movements and lyrics, trying to work out the symbols and icons they’ve put forth, and hoping to crack the impenetrable fortress they’ve built around them (from which they only emerge to become vulnerable when they want to). Much like the “Mona Lisa”, they are telling us that they know we think about them in a way we don’t think about other music artists. By donning expressions very much in the same vein as the iconic painting, they’re telling the viewer that they’re basically in the presence of a peer.īut even more than that, they’re commenting on the beguiling and enticing space they occupy in our own culture. They are telegraphing to us that they are as iconic as the “Mona Lisa”, without even saying a word. But even more of an echo of the painting is their expressions: a strong stare straight ahead, lips pressed together, shoulders back. Suits for both, in bright colours and styles specific to their tastes and representative of the times they live in again, just like the “Mona Lisa”. Like the “Mona Lisa”, Beyoncé and Jay-Z are dressed simply, but powerfully.

Sure, it’s a callback to the first time they took a photo with arguably the most famous painting in history back in 2014, but something is different this time around. The Carters begin positioning themselves as iconography from the moment we first see them, standing in front of the “Mona Lisa”. It’s a middle finger to convention, a dare aimed at squarely at the gatekeepers of history and artistic tradition: You know we deserve to be here. Their presence in a place that preserves what history has deemed the most important artworks, standing next to said art while themselves looking like art and using their body language to engage with this art, already implies they are as worthy of being there as the older work. Not only can we expect to see (and do see) The Carters standing next to some of the most famous works of art, including the Mona Lisa and Winged Victory of Samothrace, but we see that they are aligning themselves with it right out of the gate. For modern audiences and fans of The Carters, the disruption is surely welcome. Tradition and the Louvre go hand-in-hand, too, which means that Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s presence is a total disruption from the beginning. It’s a microcosm of history, which itself is mostly white, male, and heterosexual. Historically, it’s a predominately white space that primarily features white, male-created works of art. Let’s start with the primary location in “APESHIT”: the Louvre.

Jay z and beyonce music video apesht