Music videos are important in promoting art and heritage most especially discussing about something important from a specific place of origin.
Music and video makers are also art influencers. Here are some of the music videos and their corresponding reference from an art.
Coldplay – Viva La Vida
This video was inspired by the famous work of Eugene Delacroix, one of the most representative painters of nineteenth century French Romanticism. His painting Liberty represents the French people when they fought against the repressions of King Charles X. In the painting, we can appreciate a mixture of social classes, where working classes and bourgeoisie get together to fight for freedom.
30 Seconds To Mars – Up In The Air
The video takes inspiration in the works of Damien Hirst, one of the richest British artists. The video itself is filled with extremely eccentric and mysterious characters. Both, the video and the cover of the album makes a reference to the famous “spot paintings” by Hirst, who has created about 1,400 since the eighties.
Nicki Minaj – The Boys
For this video, Nikki Minaj was inspired by Yayoi Kusama’s famous Dots Obsession. This is an installation based on some of the hallucinations the artist suffered when she was a child. As she has mentioned, she would see spaces filled with patterns. Her famous dots have become a personal signature of this Japanese artist. At some point in her life, she committed herself into a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo to treat her neurosis and continue creating her art. In her own way, Minaj decided to pay homage to this contemporary artist.
Drake – Hotline Bling
Drake’s Hotline Bling music video has been picked apart by many since its release, but not by the artist whose aesthetics directly inspired the Canadian rapper’s visual treatment. Drake admits citing James Turrell’s “Breathing Light” exhibition as a creative influence, first discovering Turrell’s work as part of a retrospective at LACMA. There, he managed to interact with the display while his assistant took photos of him.
