<![CDATA[Kim Kardashian’s $1M birthday bash mocked by art-world meme]]> https://usagag.com/2020/10/30/kim-kardashian-8217-s-1m-birthday-bash-mocked-by-art-world-meme/ Fri, 30 Oct 2020 16:22:23 +0000 hourly 1 https://usagag.com Kim Kardashian’s $1M birthday bash mocked by art-world meme The fine art world is painting Kim Kardashian as a fool.

For her 40th birthday this month, Kim Kardashian didn’t let the ongoing coronavirus pandemic get in the way of her celebration plans: The reality star chartered an 88-seat Boeing 777 and flew a group of her 30 closest friends to a private island resort in French Polynesia.

But she ran into turbulence when she hit Twitter to chronicle the decadent affair, which involved lavish dinners, spa visits and guided treks across the island — and cost $1 million.

“After 2 weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine, I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time,” she tweeted on Tuesday, to the tune of more than 57,000 likes and thousands of retweets.

Since then, the whole trip has become a meme, and the art world has now latched onto that tweet specifically to mock the celebration’s excessive opulence in a period of historic pain and death. The Museum of Modern Art started the trend, publishing Kim’s tweet verbatim alongside Henri Matisse’s 1901 work “Dance (I),” inspiring others to post it next to different pieces of fine art.

While planned in secret, Kardashian in no way tried to hide the trip after the fact, sharing photos of the pricey jaunt — including her $10,000 gold birthday outfit — to social media. But she received much ire from those who found jetting off with a large group on an international travel escapade in the middle of a global pandemic to be tone-deaf.

That Kim’s luxurious trip may be controversial wasn’t totally lost on her, though, as she tweeted that her crew had all quarantined ahead of time and that the trip made her feel “humbly reminded of how privileged” her life is.

Kim’s luxe island getaway wasn’t the only birthday treat she got for her 40th: Kanye West gave her a hologram of her dad. The “surprise from heaven,” has also drawn backlash.

]]>