Vampire Weekend's first "Diane Young" video, released on March 18, seemed to reference French artist Arman's 1963 White Orchid, exploded MG car, or perhaps more recently, Superflex’s 2008 video work, Burning Car. Artists and musicians have burned cars, smashed guitars, and destroyed many other expensive items in videos throughout the years, but this time, it was different. In Vampire Weekend's case, they literally "torch a Saab like a pile of leaves," per the opening line of the song, and they accidentally caused a bit of controversy doing it. Apparently, they bought used Saabs from private owners to burn in the video, which a lot of people saw as destroying collectors' items and deceiving the sellers. They apologized.
They've followed up with a new video for "Diane Young," and this time it looks like Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper meets a big party (and even a small fight) with the band's fellow musician friends Dave Longstreth (Dirty Projectors), Hamilton Leithauser (The Walkmen), Sky Ferreira, Santigold, and Chromeo. The differences are that the food isn't limited to bread and wine (thankfully, we have pizza and cake in 2013), there's some explicit weed-smoking (using a saxophone), and Jesus looks more like Vanessa Hudgens in Spring Breakers playing with an iPhone than your holiness. If you thought the first video was going to be their last art historical reference, you were wrong. Watch below:
[via PigeonsandPlanes]
