Performer, Monét X Change: Ooh girl, she's feeling it tonight, honey. That mouth is open, honey, that embouchure is perfect. Whatever note that is being sung is in tune for sure.
Hey y'all, it's Monét X Change from RuPaul's Drag Race, and I'm so excited to be here at the MoMA to talk about this painting.
This is Modjesko, the Soprano Singer by Kees van Dongen. Modjesko was a drag performer who worked throughout the early 1900s.
A soprano singer is a high voice female singer. The sopranos always steal the show in every opera, and that's fine. The thing that let me know that Modjesko was a dramatic soprano was the hand, but also how they're just leaning ever so forward. It's like, this sound is so big I need to just lean forward to make sure that I am nailing it, that I'm sticking it to you.
She might be singing an aria at, I'm gonna say, a nightclub. I'm gonna say they went to a very fierce nightclub and Kees was so enamored by the beauty of the soprano singer that they just had to immediately go home and do this painting.
I love how they chose to illustrate this Black man in 1908 in this fabulous blue hair—it's almost like Marge Simpson—and this green hat and this yellow body. That's what's very striking to me is all the colors. We all grew up in a very binary world and it's hard to see past what we are told that we have to be. I started doing drag because it really helped me discover my identity, and it opened up my eyes to what life could be like in full color.
Drag has been around for a very long time. That speaks to how important the art form of drag is to the world. People may try to brush it off as this silly, frilly thing, but it's quite the opposite. It is something that informs the culture, that makes beautiful art, that will be around forever as well.