Muristek
The subject of a new documentary, who is also portrayed in an upcoming Dalí biopic, scorned modelling as ‘immoral and stupid’, turning instead to a lifetime of underrated, high-minded pop
At the peak of the disco era in the late 1970s, Amanda Lear, who had established herself as a singer after 15 years of being a Vogue model and muse to everyone from Salvador Dalí to Bryan Ferry, had a bone to pick. “Disco music is a fantastic medium, and it’s a pity not to use it intelligently: we used rock to communicate with youth,” she said in 1979. “What shocks me is seeing my colleagues, who sing well, sing idiocies. The music is good, the production is good, the singer is good. The lyrics are aberrant.”
Taking issue with the “love” and “baby”-heavy lyrics, her solution was to intellectualise disco. “I want to be the Juliette Gréco of the 1980s,” she used to say – someone bohemian and erudite who would deepen pop culture. With more than 20m records sold globally, she is praised as an icon who made her life a work of art, but her artistic output is on a par with her life. It is all now retold in a new documentary, Queen Lear, as well as a biopic, Dalíland, directed by Mary Harron, in which Andreja Pejić plays Lear alongside Ben Kingsley and Ezra Miller as old and young versions of the painter.
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