Madonna for Interview Magazine

Desperately seeking something interesting.

The Goods:

Interview magazine’s June 2010 issue
Director Gus Van Sant sits down with Madonna for an interview
photographed by Mert Atlas and Marcus Piggot.
Styled by Karl Templer
Art Direction by Fabien Baron

The Pics:

The Long-winded Opinion:

There's a whole gay right brain/gay left brain thing going on when we look at these pictures. From a purely emotional right-brain perspective, these are pretty fabulous shots. It's when that opinionated left brain starts asserting itself that they kind of fall apart for us.

To our way of thinking - and we've talked about this on the blog before - the most disappointing thing about Madonna as she's gotten older is that she's gotten less interesting. In the first half of her career, she made sure never to bore us as she traded one persona for another with rapid speed, making sure we were all paying attention to whatever Madonna was doing. From her NYC club kid look, to the Marilynesque material girl, to wannabe Latina to titty book impresario to Messianic holy figure, she was like a living Barbie doll, with a career and outfit for almost every occasion.

Now? Now she's just the world's most highly paid Madonna impersonator. That's her whole career, reminding us all of what she used to be. And so, we get this editorial which quite literally looks like it could have been shot 20+ years ago, with one jarring exception.

They really nailed it on the lighting, styling and makeup. Kudos all around. But no one gets higher praise than the person who did the Photoshopping. The texture on her body looks a little plastic, but they did an amazing job on her face. The only reason it's detectable at all is because we all know Madonna doesn't look anything like that now. More importantly, Madonna didn't look anything like that then. Like we said, they got all the elements right and that is the face of a woman in her thirties, but Madonna didn't have that face twenty years ago. Now she's got the vulpine look of a woman who's playing around to much with her face surgically; the unnaturally prominent cheekbones and slanted eyes.

The whole effect is just strange. Like we said, she's the world's most highly paid Madonna impersonator and nothing illustrates that better than these pictures, which depict a woman who looks a lot like the Madonna of old, but something's a little off.

More importantly, we have to ask her, "Why, Madge? Why?" You were always a pretty creative gal who spent the first 15 years of her career doing a kind of public performance art that kept the public enthralled. Are you completely tapped out on creativity? You've reached middle age and you have nothing interesting to say, like you did when you were a young sexually active woman, a heartbroken divorced woman, a mother, a woman who discovered spirituality?

We're not suggesting she was ever more than a pop culture figure, but at least she used her life to try and say interesting things. Now she's just saying that middle age is all about reliving past glories and trying to look as young as possible. Disappointing, to say the least.

[Photo Credit: interviewmagazine.com/thefashionspot.com/Pedro]

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Labels: Interview, Madonna, Magazine Cover/Editorial