art

We love the way these fantasy object-labeling memes take epic, ridiculous fantasy art and spin it into something that most people can relate to - or at least laugh at. 

Sick and tired of history memes from the twentieth century? Well you're in luck - this gallery contains 20 dank memes from the times of the Wild West, also known as the Middle Ages. What the f*ck people were doing back then, we'll never truly understand. 

Gesǣlig Eastordæg! Or something like that.

We've never seen petty like this before and honestly, this story has so many levels of petty that we're gonna have to just let it do all the talking. All we can really say is that it involves world-renowned a-hole Anish Kapoor, his "bean" (aka Cloud Gate), and the world's blackest black shade of paint.

Need to inject some simple happiness into an otherwise bleak reality? Well, the hellhole that is Twitter surprised us this week with some good old fashioned internet wholesomeness. On Monday, Chappell Ellison shared a Tumblr post from cosmictapestry with a photo of a cranky-looking baby vulture wearing a dapper pair of pants. While the trousers were intended to keep the bird from messing with his leg splints, they have made him a bit of a celebrity on Twitter - with the help of Ellison's request that someone draw the sartorially blessed fellow. 

The request, which may or may not have been serious, was fulfilled by many of Twitter's artists and executed with varying degrees of skill. While the thread does boast some impressive and realistic depictions, we're more into the crude MS Paint masterpieces. You can see both ends of the artistly spectrum below, but we highly recommend visiting the thread for more wholesome goodness. You deserve it. 

We've got a real treat for anyone who has a deep appreciation for both art history and internet culture. These memes put a contemporary twist on renaissance, medieval and classical art. The combination of these two disparate visual mediums is funny in itself and many of the dramatic expressions of characters depicted in old paintings can really transcend time with the right funny caption. It's pretty to fun imagine Byzantine artists as epic memelords of the Middle Ages.

What the hell is an NFT anyway? Non-Fungible Tokens are basically digital assets or collectors items, sort of like a rare Pokémon card that has gained value over time due to its scarcity, except NFTs only exist digitally on 'proof of work' blockchains, like Ethereum. When one buys an NFT, they aren't buying the image itself, but rather the token that points to the image or video and says 'this is the only one that exists.' Now people can even buy individual tweets as NFTs, but the way that works is a little more complicated, and frankly, we don't really get it. All we know is, Jack Dorsey is selling his first tweet ever for like, millions of dollars and 'Bad Luck Brian' sold an NFT of his school photo for 20 ETH (about $36,000 at the time). NFTs aren't only being used to sell digital art, the memes have unsurprisingly taken over and you can find everything from the 'Deal With It' sunglasses to 'Nyan Cat' selling for lots of money. All of this absurdity might seem like a harmless game to some—buying the metadata of original troll face for thousands of dollars in crypto? Sure, okay. But sadly minting NFTs on proof-of-work blockchain has disturbing environmental consequences. The average NFT that gets minted to the ETH network has the same carbon footprint as one European resident's electricity consumption for 1.5 months. So until we can figure out a more efficient way to sell digital assets, some suggest that participants in this madness will have to offset the environmental cost by doing things like reinvesting their gains into renewable energy.

We've collected some tweets that paint a picture of the current NFT frenzy—some from high-profile public figures who are participating and some reactions from people who are watching from the sidelines.

Many of us may not be able to visit museums due to the coronavirus pandemic, but we're happy to report that we've got the next best thing. Art memes. They combine the creativity and skill of our favorite eras of art with dumb and relatable humor. What more could you want? 

We've seen some funky movie posters from the Soviet Union and Poland, but Twitter user @Retr0Joe managed to completely overshadow both with his thread of hand painted African movie posters. Apparently, due to licensing issues, some African movie theaters would hire artists to paint the promotional posters for their theaters. Most of these artists were completely ignorant of the film plots, so they'd have to fake it. And apparently that means a lot more guns, a lot more violence, and unexpected cameos from Michael Jackson. And if these aren't enough for you, there are tons more to be found in the thread.

We usually use Twitter to waste time on funny tweets, but every now and then it provides some serious knowledge to our weak brains. This particular thread explains the bizarre nature of old Christmas cards - and shares some seriously freaky examples. This is some serious pre-Hallmark shit. We just wish we could find these at our local stationery store.

Throughout the history of civilization, art has been an unparalleled tool for understanding the zeitgeist of a given era. Call us crazy, but we like to think that memes are a lot like classical paintings if you think about them as cultural documents of the time. A lot of art from the past have even been reappropriated into memes. The scenes captured in Medieval and Neoclassical paintings often depict expressive and dramatic characters that one would be crazy not to try and meme today. Was Caravaggio just a pioneer of the Baroque or was he actually a 17th century memelord? We've got a bunch of great classical art memes that prove art is truly timeless.

A lot of classical art is beautiful and awe-inspiring, but then there's some that just makes you scratch your head and wonder WTF the artist was even thinking. Most of the following memes reside in the latter camp. Click here for more classical art hilarity from eBaum's World!

At this point we're all aware of the cursed nature of medieval cat art. Their strangely human painted faces are the stuff of bad trips, or for the innocent, nightmares. While we've learned to accept their demonic yet depressed vibe, Twitter user @DannyDutch has clued us into some more fascinating (and slightly freaky) medieval animal art. His thread boasts 17 examples of medieval artists saying "f*ck it, i think this is what xyz animal looks like." And while sometimes the artists hit the nail mostly on the head, some have left us either laughing at their absurdity or feeling slightly disturbed. However these artifacts make you feel, we can be sure of one thing: art and world travel have both come a long way since the Middle Ages.