This is not nearly the first time Lady Gaga has taken on the animal, mineral, vegetable game.

There was the meat dress. The poultry-nest headpiece. The Kermit cape. The raven-feathered neck brace, complete with matching plumed accoutrements. The plexi-egg birthing of “Born This Way” at the 2011 Grammys. Blood-on-lace in her 2009 VMA performance. Not to mention Gaga’s oft-rumored plans of an impending lettuce dress.

And now, in the spirit of defying the strictures of biological classification, presenting Visionaire magazine’s “Larger Than Life” issue, featuring a fish-femme Lady Gaga, slicked in all the trappings of the Gulf Coast oil spill. The magazine’s cover story, shot by Dutch art-editorial photo duo Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, is the second coming of Gaga’s mermaid preoccupation — she previously donned her fish-woman garb in the recent release of the “Yoü And I” video earlier this summer.

Greasy and coming to a speciality bookstore near you: Lady Gaga. (Courtesy Photo: The Telegraph)

“There is no oil too thick as to destroy the imagination,” reads the caption that accompanies the image.

And nothing more opaque than the abstract rantings of an ego-driven superstar.

In fact, Gaga has had much to say on the subject of mer-people in interviews past: “No matter what you do, there’s this giant boundary between you and someone else,” she said during her MTV First special in August. “So that’s what it’s about, perceiving in your imagination that there’s something magical inside of you, that you can make it work.”

So there’s creativity. There’s separation of self and other. The logistics of finned lovemaking.

“Wouldn’t a stand against ocean pollution be more meaningful?” asks a staff writer at the London based arts website, The Improper.

Regardless of symbolism, the image is as arresting as the scale of the magazine itself, a five-by-seven-foot publication released but three times a year, earning it Guinness World Record for the largest magazine in history. The scarcity of its 2,500 copy circulation contrasts the heft of its girth and its $1500 price tag. For those without a super-sized bookcase to house the life-size issue, a standard cut is available for $375, with only a three-foot diameter.

Now we all know Dawn is tough on grease, but that is a whole lot of economy-sized dish soap.

Gaga, get the hose!

-Tom McKee