David LaChapelle: For Then It Was Vital, For Then It Was Graceful

by salonwithoutwalls | Feb 20, 2024 | Art

Left to right: Kevin wears talent’s own headband and necklace. Noah wears talent’s own earrings. Zaye wears DIESEL pants, necklace, bracelet, and watch and stylist’s own gloves. Gabriel wears DIESEL bottoms, shoes, necklace, and watch. Bear wears DIESEL top, bottoms, shoes, and necklace. Adelaide wears stylist’s own dress. Axel wears talent’s own hat, scarf, and gloves.
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ONE OF 25 ART COVERS FOR FLAUNT’S 25TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE, UNDER THE SILVER MOON

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David LaChapelle is an artist whose journey is irrefutably unparalleled. But what is irrefutable artistry? For many, it is instant recognition of an unmatched aesthetic. For others, the notion anchors in a continual evolution of craft and practice, innovation. For all, though, it’s about ceaselessness—a dogged continuation of self-expression, however heroized, humbled, or hurt by the lived experience one might become.

In the years I’ve known LaChapelle, I’ve witnessed all of these attributes at once coalesce and conflict like the sort of super spring coils you see on certain carnival rides—unfathomably taught then stretched by glee and erraticism and childlike joy. It’s a trip. And the DLC trip of late has landed the artist yet again in the pages of FLAUNT, this time with a reinterpretation of Sandro Botticelli’s “The Three Graces.”

Left to right: Ava wears stylist’s own dress. Annika wears stylist’s own dress.
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When asked about the attributes of the original “graces” in the Botticelli—agreed by scholars to be those of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity, goodwill, and fertility—LaChapelle counters, “I was exploring the masculine version of this idea. I’ve always admired Botticelli’s ability to go from the mythological to the secular to the religious—his Graces are calm and serene as are all of his figures within his paintings. There is an energy coming out of my figure’s poses that are at once strong, vital, tough yet also graceful and sensitive. There is this feeling of reconciliation and love after a war or fight I was trying to illustrate.”