The days when art history was locked up in the hallowed halls of museums are over. In the Digitial Age, famous paintings and sculptures of the past have taken over the Internet, often through the lens of a pop culture trend. Big names in art history have appeared in new forms on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr. The have been posted, reblogged, tweeted, liked, and shared across the Web. As art history takes over the Internet, the disparity between highbrow and lowbrow culture has collapsed, and the unmistakable imagery of well-known works paired with modern day iconography has allowed art history to become viral. From GIFs of Miley Cyrus twerking on famous paintings to art history emojis, here's 10 Ways Art History Took Over the Internet.
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1. Everyone freaked out about Beyonce mash-ups.
2. Marina Abramovic kept doing viral stunts.
Along with his wife, Jay Z helped bring art history to the mainstream with his "Picasso Baby" performance at Pace Gallery. Not only did he name drop famous artists in the song, but he danced with the queen of performance art herself, Marina Abramovic, an act that was infinitely Instagrammed, Vined, tweeted, memed, and re-blogged. The act brought the history of performance art, previously niche genre, to the public's attention, for good or for bad.
Marina only increased her Internet fame with videos of naked Lady Gaga practicing the Abramovic Method and her telling a joke with a light bulb. She even turned to crowdsourcing to raise funds on Kickstarter for the Marina Abramovic Institute, a museum that would preserve the temporal history of performance art within an institution. With the help of the Internet, the grandmother of performance art was born anew.
3. Music videos included art historical references.
Besides being inserted into art, like Beyonce, musicians are actually bringing the art world online through their music videos. In 2010, the band Hold Your Horses released their music video for "70 Million" where they staged famous paintings by dressing up as art historical characters. The innovative video gave the otherwise obscure band over one million views on YouTube. While we might expect highbrow references from an indie group, Miley Cyrus also took a page from the history books for "We Can't Stop." Directed by Diane Martel, the video for Miley's hit is a Where's Waldo of modern and contemporary art references.
4. Album art stepped up its game.
The majority of album art, especially in pop music, used to rely on sexy portraits to make CDs instantly identifiable at record stores. With the increasing marriage between the art and pop worlds and the decline of physical CDs, however, music stars are getting more creative with their album covers, and that includes using sources from art history. Although Lady Gaga debuted her Jeff Koons-designed album cover in Times Square, it was really distributed across Twitter with over 36,000 retweets. The album showed a collapse of art history, from Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus to Koons' Gazing Ball. Jay Z pulled is album cover straight out of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the 16th century sculpture Alpheus and Arethusa for Magna Carta Holy Grail. Although these album covers are not essentially digital, their distribution online has helped bring art history to the Internet.
FULL ARTPOP ALBUM COVER.'One second I'm a Koons, then suddenly the Koons is me!' #ApplauseJeffKoons pic.twitter.com/NdAOJ8XKSw
— Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) October 7, 20135. Museums moved online.
Many museums have been demonstrating a stronger online presence, bringing their collections to Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram. SFMoMA has an exceptional Tumblr that they use as a platform for viral imagery, blogging anything from works in their collection to edible constructions of famous paintings. Even curators are getting in on the game. Klaus Biesenbach of MoMA's PS1 just joined Instagram, and this month, he's been Instagramming photos of the Mike Kelley retrospective daily. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has taken a different approach, not relying solely on social media, but building their own online platform for art. 82nd & Fifth, a site run by the Met, hosts videos where curators talk about their favorite works of art, presenting snapshots of art history in digestible video bites.
6. Art history was re-imagined as...
Every week, new Tumblrs rise to the surface of the Internet that combine famous works of art with figures or events from pop culture. Many insert superheroes and celebrities into art history. In the Tumblr Art X Smart, Kim Dong-Kyu imagines what the characters from famous paintings would look like if they had modern technology like iPhones and iPads. While this trope can get repetitive and not all that interesting, Grant Snider's Incidental Comics create storylines based on art history that go beyond the usual formula of pop + art = viral.
7. Famous works of art got social media accounts.
Art history fans have taken to Twitter and Instagram to imagine what famous artists and works of art would look like if they had social media pages. The Tumblr Histagrams creates would-be Instagram accounts of famous people, including artists. Damien Hirst's shark has its own Twitter, and so does Hirst's skull—sometimes they even talk to each other. Iconic photographs have been altered to look like selfies for a marketing stunt, and over at BuzzFeed, the characters from famous paintings started commenting on YouTube. Once we realized that characters from art history could have identities online, there was no stopping them.
I miss the @tate **sigh** Would you guys have me back?
— Damien Hirst's Shark (@Hirst_Shark) November 14, 2013
8. Art history emojis were born.
What started as a post on the Tumblr ladiesupfront evolved into a Twitter hashtag #emojiarthistory, and the craze took off. Even though the emojis are actually based in texting, they blew up into a viral meme. We're continually impressed with how clever art history fans can be.
9. Famous paintings started moving.
Dusty old paintings were given a new life when they underwent moving makeovers. Famous works became clever loops with GIFs, and animations made characters from paintings talk. While Diane Martel gave Miley some art history chops, BuzzFeed had her destroy traditional works of art with a twerking GIF. Whether for comic relief or as a new art form, art history is now well beyond the canvas.
10. Reddit dominated it all.
