page_title: Artpop
section_title: Artwork
hierarchical_section_title: Artpop / Release / Artwork
caption_attribution_description: English: Jeff Koons at the Vanity Fair kickoff part for the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival.
context_page_description: Artpop is the third studio album recorded by American singer Lady Gaga. It was released on November 6, 2013, by Streamline and Interscope Records. Gaga began planning the project in 2011, shortly after the launch of her second effort, Born This Way. Work continued until 2013 while the singer was traveling for her Born This Way Ball tour and recovering from surgery for an injury she had sustained while touring. Gaga described Artpop as "a celebration and a poetic musical journey" and an exploration of the "reverse Warholian" phenomenon in pop culture. It displays an intentional "lack of maturity and responsibility" by comparison to the darker and anthemic nature of Born This Way. Gaga collaborated with various producers on the record, including DJ White Shadow, Zedd and Madeon. Musically, Artpop is an EDM and synth-pop album, with influences from R&B, techno, industrial, and dubstep, among other genres. The themes of the album revolve around Gaga's personal views of fame, sex and self-empowerment; references include Greek and Roman mythology. It also features guest vocals from T.I., Too Short, Twista, and R. Kelly. In 2019, as a reaction to the documentary Surviving R.
context_section_description: On October 7, 2013, Gaga unveiled the album cover for Artpop on Clear Channel billboards around the world. Created by Jeff Koons, the image features a nude sculpture of Gaga with a blue gazing ball in front of her. The background consists of art works including The Birth of Venus, which inspired the singer's music video for "Applause" and the VMA performance of the song. Koons explained the meaning of the cover to MTV:
  "With the cover, I wanted to have Gaga there as a sculpture, as a three-dimensional type of form and with the gazing ball, because the gazing ball really does become kind of the symbol for everything — and this aspect of reflection that when you come across something like a gazing ball, it affirms you, it affirms your existence and then from that affirmation, you start to want more. There's a transcendence that takes place and eventually it really leads you to everything. So that aspect's there. But I didn't want Gaga there just kind of isolated, so in the background there's [Gian Lorenzo] Bernini's 'Apollo and Daphne' — and that's the work where Apollo chases Daphne and she turns into a tree. And so there's just glimpses of Daphne's face and of Apollo. Apollo is the god of music and whenever Apollo would perform music he would transcend, he would change; his being would become more feminine. And that's the transcendence that you can experience through art and life. Your being can change, your possibilities can change, your perimeters can change. And also in [these] triangular shapes that go out is Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, presenting Gaga of course in the role of Venus — of the nature of the continuation of life's energy and the pursuit and the enjoyment of aesthetics and of beauty. And of the desire to continually have transcendence."
  Will Gompertz from NME wrote that "this is a classic cover. When you're listing the 100 best covers of the 21st century, this will be right up there. Typographically it's an AA+, visually it's AAA". Later, Gaga also revealed on her Facebook page that "the first 500,000 physical copies of Artpop are crafted with LADY GAGA + ARTPOP cut out of hot pink metallic foil + silver foil. The foiling represents the true design of the cover as imagined by Koons, who hand collaged the typography himself." The track listing was unveiled in a series of fan posts retweeted by the singer with pictures of a painted mural made by fans outside of a recording studio in Los Angeles where Artpop was being completed on October 9, 2013. Originally, the track listing was scheduled to be unveiled on September 29, 2013. In a Twitter post, Gaga said it was late due to two songs fighting for the twelfth place on the album. In January 2014, China's Ministry of Culture approved the uncensored release of Artpop in the country, making the album her first to be released in the country after she was blacklisted by the government for inappropriate music in 2011. However, to avoid further controversy with the release, the cover art for the Chinese release was altered to feature Gaga's legs covered in fishnet stockings, with the blue gazing ball enlarged to cover her exposed breasts.
caption: American artist Jeff Koons designed the cover artwork for Artpop.
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