Art Memes
Since the inception of internet memes, there
have been a number involving traditional art.
Some are of specific pieces, and some par-
ody facial expressions in the works to make
new memes. Famous paintings have become
a format for some memes as well due to their
recognizability. The most common uses are
probably as reaction images or character-
izations of the meme creator. (Fig. 17)
“Potato Jesus” was a meme that became popu-
lar in 2012. A fresco entitled Ecce Homo created
by Elías García Martínez in 1930 was found
by Cecilia Giménez. She attempted to restore
the fresco, and although well intended, severely
disfigured it. (Fig. 16) This became a meme
because of its coverage in the news, such as the
BBC. Many people found they associated with
the strange expression in the revised fresco,
while others made jokes comparing their life or
some other bad thing with how the restoration
turned out. (Fig. 44) Another common meme
was photoshopping the face of “potato Jesus”
over the faces of other famous fine art pieces,
such as The Last Supper or The Scream. The resto-
ration has generated a lot of tourism for Borja,
the town in Spain in which it is installed. An
internet petition was started to keep the resto-
ration from being restored to its original image
because of the popularity of the disfigured piece.
Memes using portraiture from the traditional
as reaction images came to popularity in 2015.
Monty Python tapped into this resource in
the 1960s in some of their animated shorts.
Primitivist art is especially popular, such as
Fernando Botero’s Pope Leo X (after Raphael)
made in 1964 because of the ‘ugly’ imagery.
(Fig. 18) Also popular is work by Hieronymus
Bosch due to its abstraction. There are even
memes using Medieval art drawn on the side of
manuscripts due to the lopsided perspectives and
minimal realism. Following the popularity of
puns in first wave memes, there are a number of
traditional art pieces with impact text and puns,
such as “If it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it” over a
painting by Rembrandt, a famous Baroque artist.
fig 16
The Meme Textbook | 9