in such a world art | veg | academia | geekery

Understanding Art for Geeks: Insulting or Ingenious?

Enjoying the flickr photoset Understanding Art for Geeks by paulthewineguy. He takes canonical works of art and annotates them with images and text that “geeks” can more easily relate to. Really hard to pick out a few favourites; I highly recommend taking a look at the whole set.

Triptych of The Garden of Earthly Delights (central panel)
Hieronymus Bosch, 1503-04
Oil on wood, 220.03 × 194.94 cm.

100 Cans
Andy Warhol, 1962
Oil on canvas, 72×52 in.

One blue pussy
Andy Warhol, 1954
oil on canvas, 28 × 36 cm.

(Anyone else NOT find this site the image alludes to all that funny? It seems to be amazingly popular but kind of irritates me, actually. I guess it’s my hatred of typos and grammatical idiocy - despite the cuteness. Cute Overload doesn’t seem to have to fight that hard, though there is still a lot of overly cutesy pseudo-language for my liking.)

The Last Supper
Leonardo da Vinci, 1495–1498
Tempera on gesso, pitch and mastic, 460 × 880 cm.

Of course a fusion of two of my loves - geekery and art history. Some are hit and miss (and some I still don’t quite understand), but overall I find the images fascinating. While I know a few poised art historians in training who would scoff at these ‘mockeries,’ I think they inject a bit of fun into these oft reproduced works with a sharp wit. I like how each annotation serves to draw out a major theme of the work or meaning that may not be immediately obvious. Understanding the humour requires the viewer to interpret the work of art through their understanding of language and symbols of the digital age - creating an interesting dialogic relationship.

i’ve been looking at these the last few days, too … some of them i find quite funny, others fly over my head. perhaps i’m not geeky enough.

BUT may i say … the whole “lolcats” thing: i’m totally with you on this. i do NOT understand what on earth makes this an Internet Phenomenon, and it rather pains me to conclude that what makes for an Internet Phenomenon does not often equate to what is clever, interesting, or particularly inventive in any way. i mean, remember the hamster dance? all your base are belong to us? while the internet is full of things that are fantastic, brilliant, and totally awe-inspiring, the things that really take hold seem to be those that appeal to the lowest denominator.