This weekend, notable bummer band The National took the stage at PS1 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and proceeded to engage in a performance so bold and daring in its sadsackery that it transcended the limitations of rock and roll and became high art. Here you can watch nine minutes of their Sunday "set," in which they played "Sorrow," from 2010’s High Violet, for six hours on repeat. In case your workplace frowns upon midday suicide jams or you can't watch the video for some other reason, here are some lyrics to the song:
Sorrow found me when I was young
Sorrow waited, sorrow won
Sorrow, they put me on the pill
It's in my honey, it's in my milk
WOOOOOOO! HAPPY CINCO DE MAYO, PARTY ROCKERRRRRRS!
On Saturday, David Bowie's buddy Tilda Swinton popped up at the MoMA, in New York, to sleep in a box. It was for art, of course: Swinton was reprising her performance piece "The Maybe," which she originally busted out in 1995 at London's Serpentine Gallery in collaboration with the artist Cornelia Parker, and then later did solo in Rome and Paris. Each time, Swinton shows up unannounced, in jeans and a light blue shirt, and conks out in an elevated clear box while passersby gawk. (The title card describing the piece reads "Living artist, glass, steel, mattress, pillow, linen, water, and spectacles.") She'll be back six more times at MOMA before the end of the year, without announcing when or exactly where in the museum. In other words: If you definitely wanna see Tilda Swinton sleep in a box, go to MoMA every hour it's open for the rest of the year.
It was only this summer that a chain of curious events in the life of America's erstwhile foremost Transformer ally led us here at Grantland to wonder, So What the Hell Has Been Going on With Shia LaBeouf Recently? There was the on-set boozing, for Lawless, and there was the on-set drug-consuming, for The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman, and, best of all, there was the on-set fornication for Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac. And through it all there was Shia, yearning with all the might of a thousand failed child stars, to be taken seriously as a True Artist. Since, we haven't heard much from Shia. But when it rains it pours: Our man LaBeouf just got dropped from Orphans, what would have been his Broadway debut, and the story of why, exactly, is a rich, still-developing tale full of all manner of soul-baring tweets and private e-mails and creative differences with a Baldwin. Let's get into it!
OK, so: This artist Jonathan Gent made a painting called The Beatles in America. This painting is a representation of the withered penises of the four Beatles. (How does Jonathan Gent know what the withered penises of The Beatles look like? He doesn't. It's art.) This painting was hanging in the Museum of Liverpool, as part of an exhibition called "Liverpool Love," and was slated to be auctioned off for a children's charity. And now this painting has been vandalized!
Bob Dylan can add another line to his extensive CV: (alleged) art plagiarist! Last night, ArtsBeat brought to our attention Internet grumblings about an exhibit of Dylan’s paintings, “The Asia Series,” currently on display at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. According to the gallery’s official description, the paintings are based on Dylan’s travels “in Japan, China, Vietnam, and Korea” and are billed as “firsthand depictions of people, street scenes, architecture and landscape.” It turns out, though, that some of the paintings are actually faithful copies of old photographs. For example, here’s one that knocks off a 1950 Dmitri Kessel photo of three dudes playing Siamese chess. (The fan site Expecting Rain has a bunch more.) Whoops!
You thought nothing this week could ever top the “wha?” factor of the Insane Clown Posse/Jack White/Mozart collaboration? You thought wrong: “Born Villain,” the music video Shia LaBeouf directed for Marilyn Manson, has arrived.
