In 2010, two historically significant events occurred within two months of each other: I graduated from art school with an unimpressive 2:1 grade, and Lady Gaga appeared on the red carpet of MTV’s Video Music Awards wearing a dress made of meat. At the time, I remember being thoroughly unimpressed – in a snobby, art hipster sort of way – with Gaga’s various attempts at performative freakiness. I had also seen her, once, at London’s Groucho Club wearing a dress with mad shoulders, bumping into other patrons rather than deigning to remove her dark sunglasses, and that image had, I think, destroyed my ability to think of her as cool. Above all else, however, I did not see her meat dress as wild because I knew – being an interminable, snobby art hipster – that the idea was not new.
Linder: Linder Sets Out t o Titillate and Terrorize
Philippa Snow , Frieze, January 8, 2025
