{"id":1845223,"date":"2026-03-24T19:02:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T16:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1845223"},"modified":"2026-03-24T19:02:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T16:02:15","slug":"rashid-johnson-photographed-jay-z-for-new-gq-cover-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1845223","title":{"rendered":"Rashid Johnson Photographed Jay-Z for New GQ Cover Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GQ0426_SC_04_D_V1.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe Will Welch era of GQ<\/em> has ended with a bang. On Tuesday, the magazine unveiled the cover for its new special global issue featuring an extensive interview with Jay-Z\u2014who is now styling his name JA\u0178-Z in honor of the 30th anniversary of his 1996 debut album Reasonable Doubt<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the cover, GQ<\/em> tapped contemporary art star Rashid Johnson, who has interrogated the Black male psyche in paintings, installations, and photographs, while also resisting the notion that Blackness is monolithic or easily defined.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn that respect, Johnson is an apt match for the rapper and hip-hop mogul, who has spent his career behind the mic, in front of the camera, and in the boardroom challenging facile notions of Blackness and its place in American culture and life. <\/p>\n

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Rashid Johnson\/GQ<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tJay-Z has also, over the last decade or so, increasingly engaged the contemporary art world, most memorably with the music video for the 2013 song \u201cPicasso Baby,\u201d which featured the artist performing at Pace Gallery in a manner recalling Marina Abramovi\u0107\u2019s 2010 installation The Artist Is Present<\/em>. In 2018, Jay-Z released a collaborative album with his wife Beyonc\u00e9, Everything is Love<\/em>, led by the single \u201cApeshit.\u201d The music video for that song featured the artists at the Louvre, along with shots of numerous masterpieces in the museum\u2019s collection. <\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2023, Roc Nation, Jay-Z\u2019s entertainment company, partnered with the Brooklyn Public Library on \u201cThe Book of Hov,\u201d an exhibition chronicling his career, and featuring work by contemporary artists, including a sculpture by Daniel Arsham, Hov\u2019s Hands\u00a0<\/em>(2023), a cast of Jay-Z\u2019s arms and hands making a diamond triangle hand sign. Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, Jay-Z\u2019s art dealer, assisted with the curation. He has featured on the ARTnews<\/em> Top 200 Collectors list in recent years; he owns several works by Johnson.<\/p>\n

\n\tJohnson, meanwhile, is arguably one of the highest profile artists working today. Last April, he opened a celebrated survey at the Guggenheim Museum in New York; the show has since traveled to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the shoot with Jay-Z, Johnson told GQ<\/em> that he referenced work by Harlem Renaissance photographer James Van Der Zee, as well as the work of painter Francis Bacon, who is known for his raw, unsettling portraits.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cJay\u2019s music, lyricism, and sophistication are very much in line with a lot of interesting and historically important Black thinkers,\u201d\u00a0Johnson told GQ<\/em>, linking Jay-Z to Harold Cruse, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Michael Eric Dyson.<\/p>\n

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Rashid Johnson\/GQ<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/rashid-johnson-jay-z-gq-cover-1234778749\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GQ0426_SC_04_D_V1.jpg?w=1024″] The Will Welch era of GQ has ended with a bang. On Tuesday, the magazine unveiled the cover for its new special global issue featuring an extensive interview with Jay-Z\u2014who is now styling his name JA\u0178-Z in honor of the 30th anniversary of his 1996 debut album Reasonable Doubt. For the cover, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1845223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1845223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1845223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1845223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1845223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}