To explain her first music video off her upcoming ARTPOP album, Lady Gaga tweeted:
"'APPLAUSE' starring LADY GAGA. A film in black+white, color, and handpainted film. Directed by Dutch Photographers Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin...A MusicVideo where B+W and Color battle in a bid for your Applause!...Its inspired by the entertainers passion for shapeshifting. Would you do 'anything' for the Applause? Iconography in motion, as magic. -GAGA"
Well, OK.
The video, Gaga's first in two years, premiered on Good Morning America this morning as well as on every video billboard in Times Square. It was ushered in with a lot of hype (see above, see also this tweet: "Only w your happiness comes mine.") and talk of the merits of art and pop culture and "art in pop culture in me." That stuff.
But this is not the Louvre and we are not art historians, so we'll give you what you want to see: Lady Gaga being weird. Or, more succinctly: Lady Gaga being Lady Gaga.
Basically All of Whatever This Is:
When She Had a Tail:
Just like Avatar! Look alive, James Cameron!
When She Was an Evil Witch Who Eats Children:
When She Was a Fire-Breathing Swan:
So once again we ask the age-old question: Which came first, the Grammy egg or the fire-breathing swan monster?
When She Was a Giant and Then She Wasn't:
When She Cried With Her Giant Purple Bouquet:
When She Was The Birth of Venus Painting Come to Life:
Botticelli probably never saw this coming.