More Music Videos

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (professional name Lady Gaga1986- )

She references numerous art works in her music videos. The following three examples drew inspiration from paintings.

 

Source: You Tube by LadyGagaVEVO

Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and Warhol’s various Marilyns:

https://www.out.com/entertainment/music/2013/08/20/art-history-guide-lady-gagas-applause-music-video

Source: You Tube by LadyGagaVEVO

Interview with BBC Radio 1 DJ Greg James: “It’s very inspired by, especially in the beginning, Salvador Dalí and Francis Bacon, the surrealist painters.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/gregjames/2011/03/lady_gaga_-_the_interview.html

There are also hints of Caravaggio in the play of light and dark, beauty and the grotesque. The final image is Gaga’s face in her zombie make-up within a pink triangle blowing a big pink bubblegum bubble about to pop. The monstrous face is reminiscent of the work of Bacon, particularly his dark self-portraits such as:

https://artimage.org.uk/5067/francis-bacon/self-portrait–1973

See also

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/03/deconstructing-lady-gagas-born-this-way-video/71924

Source: You Tube by LadyGagaVEVO

A seashell headboard echoes the seashell from which Venus rises in The Birth of Venus.

The English band alt-J do a take on Raphael’s epic fresco School of Athens (1510-11) for their video Tessellate (2012), a modern-day school of philosophy as a gangster’s paradise. Much like in the original, each character in this scene describes mental states with their physical actions.

Source: You Tube alt-J

The music video for Beyonce’s Mine (2013) includes two masked figures as a noticeable quotation of Magritte’s 1928 painting The Lovers:

Source: You Tube beyonce VEVO

Kanye West’s Famous (2016)

inspired by American artist Vincent Desiderio’s Sleep, a 24-foot-long painting of nudes on a bed with tangled sheets. For his version West replaced the anonymous nudes with digitally-rendered bodies of famous celebrities including singer Taylor Swift.

https://www.vevo.com/watch/kanye-west/famous/USUV71601791

The Sea The Sea’s Waiting (2014) hand painted and directed by Zachary Johnson:

Source: You Tube The Sea The Sea

Miley Cyrus We Can’t Stop (2013)

Source: You Tube by MileyCyrus VEVO

Inspired by the works of modern and contemporary art of among others Ryan McGinley, Barbara Kruger, Guy Bourdin, and Valeria Lukyanova see

http://www.complex.com/style/2013/06/art-references-miley-cyrus-we-cant-stop-video/barbara-kruger-i-cant-look-at-you-and-breathe-at-the-same-time-1981-84

“Apes**t” by The Carters (Beyoncé and Jay-Z video shot in the Louvre)

Source: Beyoncé :\

See also “A Guide to the Art in Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s New Music Video at the Louvre” by Andrew Russeth:

 http://www.artnews.com/2018/06/17/guide-art-beyonce-jay-zs-new-music-video-louvre

Ariana Grande God is a Woman (2018)

References Georgia O’Keefe’s vulva flower paintings and reimagines the shell with God and its creatures in Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam as an all-female space, this time with a reversal of the shell from right to left:

 

Source: You Tube by Ariana Grande

Nicki Minaj ft. Cassie The Boys (2012)

Source: You Tube by Nicki Minaj

The chamber/installation is an homage to Japanese Artist Yayoi Kusama’s Dots Obsession series of very painting-like installations:

http://www.ricegallery.org/yayoi-kusama

Source: You Tube by Pedro Menchén

Kusama has also been the subject of two documentaries, one from 1968 by Jud Yalkut called Kusama’s Self-Obliteration which the painter both produced and stars in (see More Films by Painters for further details), the other the biographical documentary Kusama: Infinity from 2018 by Heather Lenz featuring her various Infinity Mirrored Rooms installations:

Source: You Tube by Jujyfruits

Source: You Tube by Magnolia Pictures & Magnolia Releasing

Postscript?

So it really does seem that art [history] has taken over the Internet. At the moment, Music videos fall into two categories: 1) those that make use of tableaux vivants or reimagings/restagings of paintings and 2) those that use paintings themselves, sometimes reimaged as well.

More to come?