Lana Del Rey: An Iconography (Bloomsbury 2025)
This monograph is under contract to Bloomsbury for publication in 2025. As an iconographic study of Lana del Rey, this book will push back against autobiographical readings of her persona and work (which serve to undermine her artistic agency). I argue that Del Rey is the quintessential post 9/11 artist whose work reveals that American identity is predicated on mythical and pernicious images that feed into late capitalist identity. I argue that Del Rey’s work is intimately bound up with psychoanalytic notions of the death drive and paranoid structures of projection and introjection, and that, as such, her invocation of clichés, intertextual references, and American iconographies drawn from sources as foundational to American white identity as frontier narratives to the ‘Golden Age’ of Hollywood is manifestly complex. This study aims to reveal the extent to which American cultural identity, for Del Rey, is both recursive and bound up with death and violence at its very core; indeed, that this is precisely the nature of her use of iconographies of whiteness, her use of the obsolete image and its aesthetic, and her insistence on the inextricable connection between American high and low cultures. As such, Del Rey is an artist of acute crisis, fracture, exhaustion, repetition, and breakdown who responds intimately and affectively to the American political moment and the slow cancellation of the future.
Final report
Currently, about 70% of the book is now completed. Chapters on five of Del Rey's albums are complete as well as the long introductory chapter. The visit to Paris Diderot was exceptionally useful and clarified that the structure of the book should proceed chronologically rather than thematically. This will minimise repetition, but also allows critical reception to be tracked and tied to pivotal political moments within America's recent history. This was an important development in deciding the remit of the monograph, but set my initial timeline calculations back even if only marginally. As such, I have been in touch with Bloomsbury and have agreed a new deadline of March/April 2026 for the submission of the manuscript and I am confident that this is entirely manageable. I have also dealt with some of the issues around copyright and use of images. In discussion with Bloomsbury, I have commissioned Cathy Lomax - a well-known artist - to interpret the arguments of each chapter and translate this visually into an original artwork which will open each chapter. I will work with Bloomsbury to clear rights any further images which are used from Del Rey's videos or marketing paraphernalia, although after lengthy discussion it would seem we are confident that most images are covered under Free Use since they are referred to at length and directly within the text.
My plan is to try to launch the book at both the University of Gothenburg and at several public venues throughout Sweden, preferably with screenings of Del Rey's videos. I am also tentatively in talks with Bloomsbury about a London based book launch.
The book will be available for pre-order shortly within the coming months.
My plan is to try to launch the book at both the University of Gothenburg and at several public venues throughout Sweden, preferably with screenings of Del Rey's videos. I am also tentatively in talks with Bloomsbury about a London based book launch.
The book will be available for pre-order shortly within the coming months.