Do you want to?

Today I have a plan. I'm on a mission to list all the art references I can find in the Franz Ferdinand video "Do you want to?".

Alex Kapranos, the lead singer, has said the song has no hidden meaning. It's simply conversations he overheard at an art gallery party. Diane Martel's video, however, has many hidden meanings. Here are some of them:

Writing on the wall reads:

"SKELETOR, DICK DASTARDLY,
C UNT DUCKULA,
TOM CAT, CAPTAIN PUGWASH”

Now, Skeletor is the Overlord of Evil, Dick Dastardly is dabble-dealing do-badder, Captain Bugwash is the bravest buccaneer and Count Duckula is a cunt.
I’m not sure who Tom Cat is, perhaps the mischievous cat from Tom & Jerry.

The women wearing nude colour underwear suggest:

Yves Klein - Anthropometry. Klein, French artist (28 April 1928 - 6 June 1962), Neo-dadaist or Post-modernist, used "living brushes" nude women in his art. He also patented his own colour blue International Klein Blue. If Yves Klein were a contemporary of ours, he would have probably ventured into making rap videos. Take a look for yourself. Nudity involved, but the ladies sure are pretty.



A band member clutching a magnifying glass attached to the wall and reading the small print of a note pinned onto the wall “Do you want to“ is a play on Yoko Ono's Ceiling Painting, an interactive piece where a magnifying glass hangs from a chain above a ladder and attached to the ceiling is a piece of paper with the word “YES”. Allegedly it was through this work Yoko met John.


Your famous friend, well I blew him before you, oh yeah.

The camera cuts to a man on fire shaking hands with a another man - Here's Pink Floyd's album cover, the Wish You Were Here LP:
















Another band member making use of an urinal. This one is too obvious:

With love,
R. Mutt.


















There are bicycles hanging from the ceiling:

Might be another Duchamp reference. His first ready made (a piece he decided to call ready made only after the exhibition of La Fontaine five years later, and not to mention managed to destroy and then had to remake) was called Roue de bicyclette and consisted of a bicycle wheel on a kitchen stool.

Then again, apparently Franz Ferdinand boys always take their bikes to tour so they can cycle off to local galleries. So maybe the bikes are there as an inside joke.

Andy Warhol behind the mixing table with a mixer in front of him, might be a simple pun.
The blender also reminds me of Henrik Jakobsen’s White Love, sperm, urine and blood in blenders.

Brian Donnelly's aka KAWS Michelin man-inspired creation Chums is featured.

A lot of details are still missing. The man in the sun recliner holding an umbrella and the bathroom shelf piece on the wall. Some of the paintings on the wall are Yves Klein pastiches, but in front of most of them I'm clueless. The inflatable giant robot? The scene in the beginning, with the band members in one bed - a performance art piece, but which one?

I do understand not all of them needn’t be direct references to pieces of art, they might be references to categories of art. Nonetheless, I think I’m missing something.

As a prize to anyone who can help, I offer a picture (by email) of a ceramic rabbit wearing a sweater.