Let’s face it, with all of the many, many entertainment choices we have facing us, every minute of every single day, when it comes to the matter of what we choose to give our precious attention to, music videos tend to rank pretty low on the totem pole. There’s probably a pretty compelling reason MTV is no longer calling itself a “music” channel. So ‘80s, isn’t it? A three-minute music video? Who has the time?

So when you hear about some “cool” new music video — maybe your tweeps told you about it — it had, well, better be good. Chicago-based indie rockers OK Go know this. Their 2006 video, Here It Goes Again, featuring the group doing a synchronized dance routine on treadmills, has been viewed by about 50 million people, so the follow-up had, well, better be good too.

Trust me, it’s great. I could describe for you the Rube Goldberg-inspired centerpiece of the new This Too Shall Pass video, but since their record company finally relented and allowed the piece to be embedded (I mean, what was that all about?), you can simply press play and see for yourself.

Engineered with help from CalTech and MIT, and built by Syyn Labs, the video — and its kinetic sculpture centerpiece — is nothing short of astonishing. Like its predecessor, it’s bound to snag all kinds of kudos and awards. This Friday, March 5, in LACMA’s West Penthouse, OK Go will be having a video release party, where I’m sure they’ll spill some of the secrets of how this mini-masterpiece came to be. If you can’t make the LACMA party, there are some videos on the OK Go website that will enlighten you.

1923 is one of two new animation loops directed by Max Hattler, inspired by the work of French outsider artist Augustin Lesage. 1923 is based on Lesage’s painting ‘A Symbolic Composition of the Spiritual World’ from 1923.

 
Here’s a short animation using the real audio of David Lynch recalling his first meeting with George Lucas. It didn’t go so well.
 
(via Mister Honk)

 
Many rock fans are aware that Don van Vliet AKA Captain Beefheart gave up making music many years ago to paint full-time, but have they seen the paintings? Van Vliet is one of the world’s finest abstract expressionists. This modern master of the off-kilter’s uniquely feral output is as powerful as Jean Michel Basquiat’s work and has been shown in many countries to great acclaim. There are several monographs about his artwork, most notably the highly coveted Stand Up to be Discontinued, which can sell for over $500 these days on ABE Books (I got mine for $75 back in the day). The above image, known as Fur On The Trellis and Just Up Into The Air (1985) is on the cover. In real life this painting is over nine feet tall.

The Captain Beefheart Radar Station website, the best place for all things Beefheartian on the Internet has a very large gallery of Van Vliet’s visual work, from the 60s to today. It’s absolutely worth your time to click through it. The images are startling and memorable. One thing to keep in mind as you look at them is to consider that most of the paintings (the ones I’ve seen at least) are absolutely huge. They’re really impressive in person.

Here are a few great Captain Beefheart clips from YouTube. There’s a lot of amazing Beefheart material there, including the complete BBC documentary The Artist Formerly Known as Captain Beefheart narrated by the late BBC radio master, John Peel, in good quality, a nervous appearance on Letterman and a TV commercial made for Lick My Decals Off Baby.
 

Alan Moore (the writer) and Stephen O’Malley (the musician and Z’Ev collaborator) are preparing a performance at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle Upon Tyne. Alan Moore’s neo-shamanic spoken performances, for my money, are a lot more interesting and transformative than his comics, and that’s saying something. Hopefully there’ll be a CD.

For the opening of the Great British Art Debate: Turner Versus Martin, AV Festival 10 brings together two great forces in contemporary culture, the graphic novelist Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, Watchmen), and musician Stephen O’Malley (Sun O))), KTL, Gravetemple). Alan Moore will write and perform a new text responding to the energy of the two paintings on show: John Martin’s The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and Hannibal Crossing the Alps by JMW Turner.

Stephen O’Malley will create a new ambient soundscape, sonically melting in the radiance of the paintings.

(Via Arthur)

(Alan Moore and David J: The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels)

Great art from 23-year-old Californian Jesse Balmer. I like this stuff.

Jesse’s site.

(Seen via the venerable Lsdex.ru)

Artist John Coulthart reveals that you can get the whole back catalog of Jugend, a fin-de-siècle German art nouveau magazine, online. In PDFs, no less. Local-goth-bands-looking-for-show-flier-art-go!

It was just over a year ago that I was wishing there was some way to see whole issues of Jugend magazine, the German periodical launched in 1896 whose Art Nouveau style gave its name to the movement in Germany, Jugendstil. Yesterday’s search for Heinrich Vogeler artwork turned up that very thing, scanned editions of Jugend at the University of Heidelberg’s digital archive. Whole numbers from 1896 to 1925! I am aghast. As well as the scanned pages being very high quality you can download the bound collections as PDFs, each one totalling over 400 pages. Leafing through pages of old magazines in a foreign language doesn’t sound very stimulating if you can’t read German but Jugend was a very visual publication. Each issue is crammed with a variety of drawings in styles which range from black-and-white Art Nouveau motifs and quasi-Symbolist illustration to humorous drawings and cartoons. Each issue also featured a large drawing or painting on a fold-out spread.

(John Coulthart: Jugend)

(The Haunter of the Dark: And Other Grotesque Visions)

Thanks to Top Shelf for sending me this veritable holy grail of comics: Eddie Campbell’s “Alec” omnibus, which collects the lifetime autobiographical output of the Australia-based comic artist.

Eddie Campbell is known elsewhere as the artist on Alan Moore’s “From Hell,” as well as his own “Bacchus” series among other works. His sketchbook-y style is instantly recognizable to anybody who has encountered him. But for my money, his autobiographical comics—collected here—are his best work. I’ve been a massive fan since I discovered his comics as a teenager.

The work collected here covers much of Campbell’s life, centering on his tender, often hilarious looks at life, art, fatherhood, Australia and everything else that crosses his path. This is a life well-documented and examined in comics form, a great contribution to not only the field of comics, but also of the art of the memoir itself.

At 638 pages, this is a massively substantial work—in all senses. The book collects nine previously published “Alec” graphic novels, and adds a tenth, unique work, also titled “The Years Have Pants,” to the end. This is great stuff—“The Dance of Lifey Death” is a particular favorite, and has been since I bought it from Mr. Campbell himself at his booth at the San Diego Comic Con about ten years ago or so. That’s an incredibly touching vignette on life, time and sex that you won’t find paralleled anywhere else in the comics medium.

Campbell’s work has a certain “life directly documented on the page, through a wise and funny filter” quality to it that is absent from a lot of autobiographical comics work. This is the work of a mature, fully realized artist, the work of a grown man who has raised a family and been through the trials and tribulations of life and documented them with a sly grin and twinkle in the eye. That’s a quality that’s rare in autobiographical comics (or comics at all)—a lot of artists working in the field seem to filter their experiences through aloof irony or a kind of pretended, forced perspective. Consequently, they often feel alienated from their work—and alienate the reader. Not so with Eddie Campbell. Reading “Alec” is like spending a day drinking with a cool uncle and getting some much-needed insight on life.

Can’t recommend this one enough. A major achievement in many fields.

(ALEC: The Years Have Pants (A Life-Size Omnibus))

(Also check out this interview with Mr. Campbell by Brian Heater at the excellent Daily Cross Hatch comic blog.)

Excellent photo essay on Tijuana, Mexico from the Denver Post. I swear I met this guy once… In a drunken night of mayhem at four in the morning… I think he paid off the cops not to jank me or something. But it’s all too hazy to remember properly.

(Denver Post: Tijuana Mexico)

(Here Is Tijuana!)

 
Vivienne Westwood’s pointedly anti-consumerist remarks backstage at London Fashion Week after her big show were taken by some as more “dotty” remarks by the great British designer, but they didn’t seem that way to me. Yes, there is certainly a, uh, tension between showing a new collection of clothes and then telling everyone assembled not to buy them, but do you think Westwood doesn’t know that?

And besides, since when is the pure act of telling the truth, somehow dotty in the first place? Have I missed something here? The woman’s 1000% correct. She should be commended for her commitment to the future of mankind—and speaking with common sense—and not mocked.

I actually met her once about ten years ago and she was a trip. My close friend Oberon Sinclair was doing some PR work for the opening of the Westwood boutique in New York and there was a big sit down dinner for a lot of people. Westwood didn’t know a lot—if any—of the people present and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, who I attended the dinner with, gallantly and sweetly, sat down with Westwood to put her at ease. So I was along for the ride and we sat across from her for about two hours and she was a delight, if a little non-sequitur at times. (Not a judgement, just a description. People must say that about me all the time…)

One-of-a-kind designer Vivienne Westwood Sunday night presented a gorgeous collection of autumn and winter outfits at London Fashion Week, then went backstage and told reporters she hopes people stop buying her clothes.

“Stop all this consumerism,” said Westwood, the former high priestess of punk who has increasingly used her catwalk shows to spotlight her concern about climate change.

“I just tell people, stop buying clothes. Why not protect this gift of life while we have it? I don’t take the attitude that destruction is inevitable. Some of us would like to stop that and help people survive,” she said.

 
Below is part one of Dame Westwood’s interview on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross last year. I thought she was fucking awesome when I saw this. Part II is here. Both parts are well worth watching. When is the last time you heard a public figure speak this passionately about something?
 

 
Westwood Condemns Consumerism After London Show (ABC News)
 
Vivienne Westwood meets James Lovelock on video (Dazed Digital)