Madonna Extreme

She may have gotten her start traipsing the art underground, arm-in-arm with Basquiat, but her art collection began on a highbrow note: In 1987, she shelled out nearly $1 million for Fernand Leger's Les Deux Bicyclettes.    Since then, she has acquired more than 300 works, drawing from Modern masters -- Man Ray, Salvador Dali, Maxfield Parrish -- and the occasional contemporary one, a la Hirst. Fellow chameleon Frida Kahlo is a favorite, as is sultry portraitist Tamara de Lempicka. In 2000, Madonna paid $4.7 million for Pablo Picasso's Buste de Femme a la Frange, contributing to a 2008 appraisal of her collection of more than $100 million. In May 2013, she put up one of her Legers -- the 1921 Trois Femmes a la Table Rouge, picked up at Sotheby's for $3.4 million in 1990 -- for auction, pledging that profits would go toward girls education in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It went for $7.2 million. Source:   Hollywood Reporter

She said... Madonna is the cover girl on Harper's Bazaar's “The Daring Issue.”  Well, of course she is. I used to hope that at a certain point Madonna would go all Dietrich on us. Stand in a misty spotlight in a glamorous, glittery gown, and sing some of her truly lovely ballads. (In the end, I think it will be her ballads, rather than her dance music, that will define her for future generations.) But this is not going to happen! And I suppose, certainly for Madonna, that’s a good thing. Calming down would be like a little death for her. She has to be active, brassy and bold — creative. (Even if we’re not quite sure what she’s creating!) And while she can be hurt by words, she doesn’t dwell on those who don’t approve." She tells the magazine this, and I think it truly is Madonna’s mantra for existing.  “If I can’t be daring in my work or the way I live my life, then I don’t really see the point of being on this planet.”