Lady Gaga and her new scent, FAME, turned the tables during a night of masquerade at the Guggenheim museum in New York. While there, guests were asked to wear masks while observing the performance.
Delusions of artistic grandeur: Lady Gaga tweeted: "I've arrived to the Guggenheim!" for her FAME launch; photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Scaaaary Move!!" Lindsay Lohan was tempted, but then refused to have her photo taken for Heide Hatry's "Schrodinger's Cat" performance, above, at Lady Gaga's FAME launch; Photo by Steven K.
"Mirroring Fame" photo by Heide Hatry
Gaga attempted to personify the inner beauty of the Aquarian "water bearer." Yet, according to reports, her gorgeously made up face dissolved into the merely ordinary the longer she spent in a glass house.
...getting a tell-tale Aquarian winged angel tattooed on the back of her head. AP photo by Mesfin Fekadu.
Indeed, this mysterious public branding of an Aquarian symbol is perhaps a superficial attempt at balance. The Twitter Queen has so triumphantly made her famous image synonymous with the radioactive Aquarian shadow by mirroring her "little monster" fans who would do nothing to get some of that little fame elixir for themselves.
This attention grabbing only serves to obscure the authentic artists who have been doing the inner work to embody the Aquarian Age icon.
Heide Hatry, here holding an Ouroboros for her "Schrodinger's Cat" performance at the Guggenheim FAME event, is at the forefront of contemporary artists pioneering new hermetic forms. The Ouroboros is the symbol for the self-devouring of the artist who dares to go inward. Photo by Steven K.
Finding the balance between the newly arising, long repressed feminine (which lacked not only an image but a language in Western culture) and the masculine has been the task of pioneering artists for over a century.
Heide Hatry, right, performing Schrodinger's Cat with Aquarian Paris Hilton at the Guggenheim as a reaction to Lady Gaga's FAME. Photo by Steven K.
This brings us to a crucial question regarding the "radioactive" shadow of fame mongering personified by Lady Gaga and her new scent that only the hieros games can heal:
Lady Gaga performing at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art is the defining image of the West Coast museum's demise. Does the image of Lady Gaga arriving at the Guggenheim for the publicity spectacle of her "radioactive" scent point to this East Coast cultural institution as the next to fall?
Stay tuned for an upcoming posting of a discussion about radioactivity and the newly emerged archetype of the hieros gamos with Dr. Remo Roth.
Lisa Paul Streitfeld is an art critic and curator dedicated to tracking the emergence of the hierosgamos in 21st century art.