Kanye West’s provocative album cover for My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was intended to be banned, according to the artist who painted it. George Condo claims his depiction of West and a, er, nude armless angel was requested by the rapper to create controversy. Yes, a publicity stunt by Kanye West. Difficult to believe? Hardly. But still we’re impressed with the rapper’s audacity. The controversy over Condo’s painting has always been a little dubious. In October 2010, a month before the release of the album, West tweeted: “Yoooo they banned my album cover!!!!! Banned in the USA!!! They don’t want me chilling on the couch with my Phoenix!” Implying that Walmart had been offended by an oil-painted nipple, West cited the cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind album, with its photograph of a naked baby. “So Nirvana can have a naked human being on their cover, but I can’t have a PAINTING of a monster with no arms and a polka dot tail and wings,” he wrote. But Walmart denied banning anything. “We’re excited about Kanye West’s new album and we look forward to carrying it in our stores on 22 November,” the company said. “We did not reject the cover artwork and it was not presented to us.” According to a profile of Condo in the latest issue of the New Yorker, the cover was designed to create controversy. West was looking for “something that will be banned”, Condo said (via New York magazine). The rapper visited the painter’s New York studio, they spent several hours listening to songs, and then Condo made “eight or nine paintings”. Most of these were used for My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. For the cover, “West chose [the one with] … a naked black man on a bed, straddled by a naked white female creature with fearsome features, wings, no arms and a long, spotted tail”. We wonder how long he waited to tweet the scandal.
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