Last week, Taylor Swift released her anticipated 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl. It reflects her (now) happy love life and how she navigates her new relationship and fame, and the realities of the music business. As with all Taylor Swift albums, there are a bunch of themes and ideas running through.

Nowadays, anything Taylor does is accompanied by news articles, memes and a huge amount of online discourse. Her lyrics and imagery are analysed, examined and interpreted. While I was listening for the first few times, I started to think about what art might represent some of the ideas and themes she’s exploring.

So here are five paintings inspired by the themes of The Life of a Showgirl. They come from several different countries and time periods, showing that good art is always open to interpretation and new contexts.

The first painting is Ophelia by John Everett Millais. On display at Tate Britain, Taylor has said that this painting served as an inspiration for the music video and album cover art (though another painting of Ophelia by Friedrich Heyser is a more literal visual inspiration).

It was painted in the 1850s, inspired by the character of Ophelia from the Shakespeare play Hamlet.

The woman in the painting was model Elizabeth Siddal, who posed in a bath full of water for four months. Lamps under the bath kept the water warm.

This painting is a portrait by Suzanne Leloir, dating from 1916. Broadly speaking, this is from an era when many female artists had to take artistic matters into their own hands. The painting was first seen in Feminal, which was the first magazine directed and written by women to be published in Catalonia. It was published every month, as a supplement to another magazine, between 1907 and 1917.

I saw this painting in an exhibition at the Museu d’Art de Girona which focused on Feminal as an outlet for women’s art, and it is part of the collection of the Musée Gallé-Juillet which is in Creil, Hauts-de-France.

I chose this for Opalite as the stones on the gown in the painting look a little like opals (and vaguely similar to what Taylor wore on Jimmy Fallon's show). Also, how it was first published by female artists in Feminal reflects how Taylor has said the song speaks about finding ways to make your own happiness.

Taylor's tune Elizabeth Taylor pays homage to the legendary screen icon, while linking their lives through their shared name. The song appears to be about having a love life under the lens of Hollywood and celebrity. Someone who knew all about celebrity, image and art was Andy Warhol - so his image of Elizabeth Taylor seems like a perfect choice.

Created in the early 1960s, it is one of a series of Pop Art prints depicting celebrities and 20th-century icons. It was created from a publicity photograph of Taylor from the 1961 film Butterfield 8, rather than a 'real' portrait. She had won the Best Actress Oscar for her role in the film and was at the height of her career and fame.

Warhol also has an earlier artwork referencing Liz Taylor. Bringing both his and Swift’s themes together, it is called Men in Her Life. Their love lives often eclipse both Taylor’s artistic outputs.

As I listened to Father Figure, this was the first painting that jumped into my mind. The song appears to be about standing up to a father figure or svengali character and overtaking him with success, and how he cannot deal with this.

The idea of standing up to the power that promotes you also runs throughout this painting. It is called A Meeting of the School Trustees and is by Canadian artist Robert Harris, and was painted in 1885. It's on display in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

The young female teacher in the painting is standing up to the men in the room, who represent the board of the school. Her pose is somewhere between pleading and defiance, challenging their authority, and is a contrast to the men's indifference and scepticism. The woman in the painting is Kate Henderson, a teacher on Prince Edward Island who persuaded the school to adopt more modern teaching methods.

The theme of this duet with Sabrina Carpenter is about the difference between the illusion of the stage and the reality of the business - how the glamorous popstar life is never what it seems, as well as warning younger performers of the downsides of fame.

Many artworks, particularly in the mid-to-late 20th century (like Warhol's above), have explored this theme. For this choice, I've gone way back in time to the 1840s. This painting is called La Maschera / The Mask, by French society painter Joseph-Désiré Court, which is on display at the Revoltella Museum in Trieste.

He painted many portraits of society figures, the great and good of early 19th-century France. This portrait hints at the idea that there is a public face and a private face - there's a life behind the mask and we 'don't know the life of a showgirl... and we're never ever gonna'.

Both when Taylor announced and released this album, museums around the world posted memes and art to bring the ideas and themes to life. I love this - finding a way to make art relevant and interesting to contemporary audiences, especially very dedicated Taylor Swift fans. Here are some selected highlights:

There are likely lots more of these! Incidentally, last year, I wrote an article for Europeana about how museums engaged with fans during the Eras Tour, with examples from Austria, Germany, Ireland and the UK. Great initiatives all!

Thank you for reading + until next time,