The Meme Textbook Part 1: Early Memes | Page 10

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At a cultural level , the awareness of traditional fine art can also create a meme . In 2016 , an image of popular singer Justin Bieber being choked became a meme , not just because of the humor the audience found in his being choked . ( Fig . 21 ) Instead , many pointed out that there were a number of similarities to traditional Renaissance paintings . The lighting , golden ratio composition , color scheme , among other things contribute to the overal aesthettic of Renaissance art such as the Lamentation Over The Dead Christ by Tintoretto , which was created in 1590 . ( Fig . 20 ) A screen capture of a tweet pointing out the similarity of the photo to Renaissance imagery appeared on Tumblr . Tumblr users are known for analyzing the humor and background to a meme , sometimes ironically , sometimes as a meme itself , and sometimes out of pure intrigue . Fig . 19 is a screen capture of the thread following the tweet . The users range from legitimate analyzation , to the continued generation of memes .
User bibliofilariidae contributed a well known meme of creating a caption to the image in the same way a museum would . Although in this case the context is very literal , the meme of museum captioning often is used when denoting that an image or portion of text , often a screen capture from other social media , is art . This is frequently used with insults that are so good they are to be considered art .
As the meme of Bieber being choked rose to popularity , people made parodies using filters to make the image more painterly , phtoshopping Bieber and others in the photo ’ s faces over famous art , such as Leonardo DaVinci ’ s The Last Supper .
10 | Part One : Early Memes