EPISODE 7 GRACE JONES
Dust off your Armani blazers and slip on those oversized sunnies, kids – today we’re talking about the singer, actor, and style icon Grace Jones. In this episode, we discuss some of her most famous collaborations, from the album covers she made with her problematique ex-lover Jean Paul Goude to an epic costume she created with her friend Keith Haring, and ask the question: what does it really mean to be a muse?
TW: In this episode we discuss the objectification and exoticisation of Black female bodies and the Hottentot Venus.
Image 1: Grace Jones Nightclubbing, 1985
Image 2: Grace Jones Island Life, 1981
Image 3: Grace Jones Performing at the Paradise Garage 1985, Estate of Tseng Kwong Chi and Keith Haring
Image 4: Alexander Calder, Josephine Baker, 1927-1929, Iron-wire construction, 39 x 22 3/4 x 9 3/4 inches. Museum of Modern Art, NY
Bibliography:
Grace Jones and Jean-Paul Goode, One Man Show, 1985. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgooF0X31pc&ab_channel=ReelblackOne
Grace Jones, I’ll never write my memoirs, 2015. Simon and Schuster.
Grace Jones on Alan Carr: Chatty Man, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzZHzmVk3Pc&ab_channel=AlanCarr%3AChattyMan
Hall, Jake. Exploring the complicated relationship between between jean-paul goude and grace jones, 2016, in I-D Vice. https://i-d.vice.com/en/article/d3v9k7/exploring-the-complicated-relationship-between-jean-paul-goude-and-grace-jones
Brazelton, Bennett. “The Futures of Grace Jones: Queer, Black, Dystopian, Eternal.” Fire!!!, vol. 5, no. 2, 2020, pp. 53–82. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5323/48573838.
Kershaw, Miriam. “Postcolonialism and Androgyny: The Performance Art of Grace Jones.” Art Journal, vol. 56, no. 4, 1997, pp. 19–25. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/777716.
Hobson, Janell. “Remnants of Venus: Signifying Black Beauty and Sexuality.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, vol. 46, no. 1/2, 2018, pp. 105–20. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26421165.
