Why did they edit the ARTPOP cover?

[Suspiria 10,683]

So as we all know the ARTPOP cover featured a sculpture of Gaga by Jeff Koons:

However the real life sculpture looked very different, lacking colour/texture:

 

Was it ever explained why they decided to edit the photo on the cover? If their intention was to display the sculpture, then shouldn't they have left it as-is? And if they wanted it to look more like the real Gaga then wouldn't it have made more sense to just use a photo of her?

 

[Weasel 12,525]

Because the statue looks like an unimpressed asian man? 

[ryanripley 86,575]

cus it would look really weird  

[mr.peter 3,516]

I always thought the image is a photo of Gaga edited to look like a statute. 

[cool365 347]

its probably has to do with the angle shadow and lighting,

i always thought it looked different too though ngl 

[Sneaky Oliver 20,858]

Because the real sculpture looks weird and they took the picture for the cover with different lighting so it may look naturally different from the artrave

[elijahfan 24,511]

9 minutes ago, Suspiria said:

Was it ever explained why they decided to edit the photo on the cover? If their intention was to display the sculpture, then shouldn't they have left it as-is? And if they wanted it to look more like the real Gaga then wouldn't it have made more sense to just use a photo of her?

 

Actually, the cover is a photo of her, edited so it looks like a statue. The statue displayed at the release party was made afterward.

[DrKindnessKunt1999 5,559]

You could see the photographers/lights if you stare at the blue orb. 

The statue isn’t part of the album cover. Gaga was edited to look like a statue.

Edit: No this isn’t an unedited version of the album cover.

[FfFfFfFF 54,014]

The main reason is the fact that the statue in itself, without editing would have been unaesthetic, unpolished and weird for an album cover.

My interpretation is that since ARTPOP was meant to be commentary of pop culture, the image was supposed to represent

1) how easy is to fake something, make something appear more human in the eye of the public aka how companies market their stars

2) how pop icons are both reality and myth

 

[SJAG 1,597]

23 minutes ago, elijahfan said:

Actually, the cover is a photo of her, edited so it looks like a statue. The statue displayed at the release party was made afterward.

Actually, the cover ISN'T a photo of her. In Elle's October 2013 issue she revealed that the cover featured a statue made by Jeff Koons

They’ve hung out at Koons’ farm in Pennsylvania and in his Manhattan studio, where, she says, “he’s making a sculpture of me, and it’s going to be my album cover.”

As mentioned, by the images in the ARTPOP booklet you can tell it's not her since she looks very different from the final image. He probably took pictures of her in the same pose to use as a reference for the actual statue.

It's easy to recognize it's not a real person, just take a look a the eyes by zooming the album cover.

They probably colored it with a computer program to make her look more realistic.

[SJAG 1,597]

She says the image on the cover is a statue in this tweet too.

 

[Spartacus 4,485]

40 minutes ago, mr.peter said:

I always thought the image is a photo of Gaga edited to look like a statute. 

Same.

[Guest]

I remember reading Koons made 2 sculptures of her. The first was the size of her so it could be photographed for the cover & the second was the bigger one they put on display at the artRAVE

[Miel 15,009]

I think the image on the cover is either a rendering of the statue (before it was laser cut), or a deeply edited image of it.

[Killa 15,071]

No wonder ARTPOP "underperformed"

You are a bunch of flops