Golden slumbers …
Over an hour in length and filmed in a single take, Sam Taylor-Johnson’s video portrait of footballer David Beckham was created during a scheduled post-training siesta in a Madrid hotel room in 2004.
Pillow talk …
Foreshadowing the work is Michelangelo’s sculpture Night and Warhol’s film of his snoozing boyfriend, Sleep. Like Warhol, Taylor-Johnson lets us witness something only lovers get to share, as if we were pillow to pillow, taking us closer to her subject than lurid tabloid stories ever can. There’s no snoring or farting, mind you, just a beautiful topless man with a dreamer’s flickering smile.
Dream on …
Transforming Beckham – the pre-eminent example of male physical prowess – into a passive Sleeping Beauty pushes multiple buttons. Not least, turning the tables on centuries of male artists depicting slumbering women who, by virtue of being unconscious, are implied to be sexually available.
Oh baby …
It is currently installed in the ultrasound department of the east London hospital where Beckham was born.
