The Art of Celebrity

Improbably, Britney Spears has become a symbol of the pro-life movement, at least in the eyes of one artist. Next week Daniel Edwards’ life-size sculpture of the pop princess in labour – Monument To Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston – will go on display in New York.

“When I saw an image of her, I thought she was quite a beautiful pregnant woman," said Edwards, who is fascinated that she interrupted her career to have a child. The fact that he portrays her in a fashion more suitable for conceiving than bearing children appears to belie his sincerity, but he says the all-fours position is reminiscent of her sex-kitten stage shows.

"Pro-lifers normally promote bloody images of abortion. This is the image of birth. Everyone is coming at me with anger and venom, but I depicted her as she has depicted herself – seductively. Suddenly, she's a mom." Not surprisingly, the pro-life movement isn’t exactly thrilled to have the pop tart as a spokestatue.

"It's a farce to suggest that this is pro-life,” John-Henry Westen, editor of LifeSiteNews.com, a conservative family values group told the National Post. “You get unwanted babies through the type of promiscuous sex celebrities like Britney Spears portray through their acts."

It’s what fascinates me about celebrity – how people lay their own concepts and ideals on them. Let’s be serious folks, Britney is just a nouveau-riche piece of white trash who has been in the spotlight so long that she has no sense of reality.

Not that I’m projecting on her…

6 comments:

  1. Ha! Well said! I have a post about it on my blog.

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  2. This is the same guy who had the death masks of a Red Sox legend in some sort of dedication to Ben Affleck.

    It's clearly satirical, and a desperate grab for attention.

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  3. you failed to mention that her pregnacy was totally planned - planned to get pregnant and planned the dat for her C-SECTION. lady never went through labour!!

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  4. Satirical or not, the work clearly garners attention. When an artist uses a celebrity as a subject is it any different than a magazine throwing the flavour of the month on their cover, a big actor guest starring on a TV show during sweeps or having Pamela Anderson host this Sunday's Juno Awards (Canadian music awards)?

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  5. When the celebrity had no idea that the artist was even using their image? Yup, it's different. Of course it is.

    I mean, I detest Britney Spears myself, but this guy didn't even attempt to get her input - he used a waxwork of her instead. Something about that just screams all kinds of wrong to me.

    But, like I said, it's satirical. Something tells me that she wouldn't even know what that word means.

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  6. Is it just me or does that not even look like her?
    And what's up with the bear head?

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