For W, I wanted to turn the lovely Nicki Minaj into a powdered 18th-century courtesan.â€
“In her performances, Minaj makes very explicit and Âchallenging use of her beauty and her body, so I thought of comparing her to some of the most famous courtesans in history: the Marquise de Montespan, Comtesse du Barry, Madame de Pompadour, and ÂMadame Rimsky-ÂKorsakov. My idea was to reproduce four iconic portraits of some of the most fascinating females of the past in a series starring an American pop-culture role model. We tried to re-create those original portraits using similar furniture, props, and clothing, à la Visconti. Luckily enough, the result came out as surreal as it could be, just as I wished.â€