Kanye West- a one-man band, a man who made himself a star. Not only is he a musician, but as his recent activity proves, he is passionate about visual arts and he knows the art market pretty well. He created his works, which are multi-media works of art, with a little help of his friends, such as:
Takashi Murakami
In 2007 Takashi Murakami, probably the most famous Japanese contemporary artist nowadays, whose colorful, pastel imagery related to anime and manga fascinated Kanye. He produced for him the album cover for the record Graduation, and designed the music video for Good morning. This is how Murakami described the collaboration: “It was difficult because every week Kanye has new ideas — changing, changing, changing.”
Vanessa Beecroft
In 2008 Kanye began a collaboration with an Italian-American artist, Vanessa Beecroft. As she recounted: ” [Kanye] asked me to choreograph a performance for his 808s & Heartbreak private listening party in 2008. I was going through a divorce and I started to think that maybe he was my black, male alter-ego.” Beecroft, known mostly for her multimedia works and her ‘living paintings’ usually includes nudity in her works and this is what Kanye liked about her: “I’ve always been a fan of Vanessa’s work. I like the idea of nudity”, he said in 2008. Two years later, Beecroft was the art director for West’s 35-minute music video/short film:
After this cooperation, Beecroft designed the stage design and choreographies for the YEEZUS Tour (October 2013 – September 2014), the decorations for his wedding with Kim, directed the January 2015 video Only One and the Yeezy Boost Presentation Performance in February 2015, September 2015 and February 2016:
Vincent Desiderio
In June 2016 Kanye bewildered the world with his large-scale sculptural work Famous which showed a lineup of celebrities such as himself, Donald Trump or Kim Kardashian, which was a homage to Vincent Desiderio’s 2008 hyperrealistic triptych Sleep. The artist described the clip as a “feat of magic… rapturously beautiful and frighteningly uncanny”:
