Olympia, a portrait of his wife Georgette by René Magritte, was stolen from a Brussels museum last Thursday. Magritte is my favourite surrealist and it reminded me of a favourite ballads by one of my favourite musical artists: René and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War, by Paul Simon.

Besides its pretentious-sounding title, it is an amusing, touching and joyous piece of surrealism itself. It portrays the couple as secret admirers of the doo wop groups of the 1950′s: The Penguins, The Moonglows, The Orioles and The Five Satins. I love this song.

A video made for this song by Joan Logue in 1984 is unavailable so I pieced together a string of images of Magritte paintings to accompany the song. I think Simon got the mood exactly right, as the resulting video shows.

This beautiful song is found on Simon’s 1983 album Hearts and Bones. Although it was not a commercial success, it is certainly one his best albums – the product of some of his most creative and high-quality song-writing. It even includes a musical guide to songwriting, Song About the Moon – and I have yet to find a better, more practical guide.

Heinz Edelmann, the artist behind the 1968 animated Beatles film Yellow Submarine, has died at the age of 75. His psychedelic images had a huge influence on 1960′s culture. Edelmann’s work “had its own whimsical aesthetic”,

The bulbous Blue Meanies, which personify an evil mood as actual villains, pursue the innocent, well-coifed cartoon Beatles across an ever-shifting milieu of mysterious seas and holes that can be magically picked up and moved. The yellow submarine itself stops in an ocean of pulsating watches, representing time, to light a cigar for a friendly sea monster.

Notably, the designs prefigured contemporary music videos, especially in their use of dancing typography. Letters spelling out the lyrics “Love is all you need” morph into a strobing neon wallpaper pattern.

Here is All You Need Is Love, from Yellow Submarine.

(Thanks Bruce)