Gustav Klimt, The Kiss. All images © ND Stevenson
More than 100 years after it was first exhibited, art historians still debate whether Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, submitted to the 1917 Armory Show in New York, was a wry joke or sly commentary on modern art—or both. Thats because the sculpture, a urinal the artist signed R. Mutt, was just a standard piece of plumbing. But Duchamp is also known to have coined the term readymade, in which he displayed objects like bicycle wheels or snow shovels as artworks unto themselves, posing the fundamental question that still thrills theorists: But is it art?
If Duchamp were around today to know what an emoji was, hed probably love comic artist ND Stevenson’s take on Fountain, composed of a slew of what we might consider 21st-century digital readymades. A few years ago, the artist figured out that he could add countless icons to the standard Instagram stories template, resizing and rearranging them to create original compositions.
Starting with a basic background image, Stevenson adds numerous elements, like a fork standing in for a pitchfork in Grant Woods American Gothic or an upside-down red exclamation point in place of a necktie in René Magrittes The Son of Man. For Johannes Vermeers Girl with a Pearl Earring, a bowl and a cloud provide the basis of the subjects famous blue-and-white head wrap; a toilet stands in for Duchamps urinal; and numerous flowers, evil eyes, books, cheese, and urns make up the patterns of Klimts embracing figures in The Kiss.
Its worth diving into Stevensons post for more emoji recreations.
Left: Grant Wood, American Gothic. Right: Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring
René Magritte, The Son of Man
Left: Jacques-Louis David, “The Death of Marat. Right: Marcel Duchamp, Fountain
Georges Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte
Left: Edward Hopper, Nighthawks. Right: Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing
Left: Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam detail of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Right: Francisco Goya, “Saturn Devouring His Son
Vincent van Gogh, “Sunflowers
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