Picasso Baby: A Performance Art Film (HBO)

Picasso Baby: A Performance Arts Film

Starring Jay-Z
HBO

Released: 2013
Runtime: 11 minutes

Picasso Baby, rightly titled after one of Jay-Z's songs on his Magna Carta Holy Grail album released in 2013, is of Jay Z performing the song "Picasso Baby" in front of fans, artists, and actors at an art gallery in New York. His stage was set with a bench where people sat to view him perform on white flooring in the middle of the art gallery. The simplicity of the event was nice, but it was not intriguing visually to me. I thought the concept was great, but it was quite simple in nature. I thought it would have been more to his performance as in light changes, different images being displayed on the wall.. or even paintings to capture the feeling of an actual art gallery.

Jay-Z's vision for this film was to have himself and the famous individuals viewing him from the bench to be human art forms. I did not get that impression. I think it was a great idea, but it was poorly executed. Anyone can perform in an art gallery and call what they're doing art. In my opinion, it was missing something. It isn't a terrible film, but I believe Jay-Z should have let someone else produce it instead of himself. Maybe it would have been more pleasant to the eye and... believable. Everything would have meshed together. No one ever stands behind a rope in an art gallery. If the audience were free to move around and actually look at him like they were viewing a piece of art, I would have found it to make more sense than it did. All in all, great film for his fans.