Can Rare Pepe Memes be Considered Art?

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If you’ve been on social spaces of the internet, you would be hard pressed to not come across Pepe the frog a.k.a “Sad frog face” either as a meme, or a reaction image or even just high effort drawings. While the life expectancy of meme formats are getting shorter and shorter on the internet, Pepe is one of the few concepts that has stuck around since the conception of meme culture on the internet. Being a meme that never dies, Pepe’s journey and perception can be considered a reflection of the Internet’s meme humour evolution as a whole. This evolution in itself is reminiscent of how the world has reached from conventional art forms to postmodern art. In this essay, I want to show that there are certain parallels to be seen between the movement of memes and movements of art in the past. This allows for a theory that memes are a form of art, and that rare Pepes are a special kind of art. Pepe’s success and ubiquitous presence can be attributed to the larger discussion about the medium of memes itself, and its functionality in a space which is built and run with the tools of virality and popularity. To explore this, we shall first define art and how it has changed to accommodate memes, and then how Pepe memes fit into this paradigm.

What can be defined as art nowadays? Anything that has form and intent can be called art. Form can be defined as space that a piece of art takes up in any medium and intent is the idea that it is made for the sake of making art, with the burden of meaning resting on the viewers’ shoulders. The very act of creation of art is intentional. In the era of postmodern art, the “art” itself has become less about the result or the product of doing something, and more about the doing of it — the process of art, and the experience one gains from it. This certainly broadens the horizons of the definition of art, especially with the level of connectivity humans have with each other now. Physical or cultural boundaries are no longer barriers when you have an infinite space to discuss a topic, i.e. the internet. We can agree though, that we hardly gain any critical insight on most of the art on the internet, like fanart, vector illustrations, rage comics etc. This is where we can divide the new movement of art into good art or true art and bad art. What can be considered good art? Bob Black, in his essay titled “The Abolition of Work” defining “play” as an activity that one yearns to do, points out the key differentiation between play and work — how little one cares for the consequence or the result of doing the activity, “The player gets something out of playing; that’s why he plays. But the core reward is the experience of the activity itself.” (“The Abolition of Work”) Good art, in my opinion, is a form of play. It comes from being made for the sake of making, and not for anything else. This is not to say that it shouldn’t say anything or appeal to someone. The “art” part of a painting is not the colours of a canvas, but the idea in the artist’s mind. The end result, as Bob Black puts it, is “gratuitous”. On the other hand, bad art is everything that is made inauthentically. Art that is made to serve a purpose of utility, politics, propaganda or mimetics.

Art, in the sense of paintings or drawings, is no longer something only the upper echelons of society can enjoy. The process of art has been decentralised and demystified. The power to call something art now rests with people. This can, in large part, be attributed to the internet. Through digital media sharing, anyone can make art, and anyone can consider something art. As Federico Babine says in an article describing what can be defined as great art,

“In everything, there is a bit of ART. There is, you have just to discover how to see it. It is often hidden, fragmented, disorganised, and unassuming. The challenge is to discover it, compose it, and order it. We should observe things from a different point of view. Looking at the world upside down can offer many creative ideas and awaken from a kind of “sleep of vision.” (Stewart)

If everything contains art, then the vast expanse of the internet has only made it easier for people from different walks of life to discover and appreciate it. The internet has shaped up to become a platform for humanity to exist on, rather than something we derive utility from as just a tool. It is not a far-fetched idea to consider that the internet is the new place to make, showcase, critique and trade art. The internet is no longer a tool for humans, but an extension of humanity itself.

Memes serve as a mirror to internet culture. They tend to not be considered art because they are undervalued as signifiers of the human experience. Unlike conventional art, they are abundant, accessible and easy to understand. The contextual barriers needed to be a part of the meme in-group is lower. This dismissal stems from the erroneous assumption that art needs to be complicated. Should art necessarily be layered or cryptic? Confucius says that the truest nature of humanity is the social aspect of experience. This ideal level of personhood is only achieved when social awareness is integrated seamlessly into one’s activity without the need for abstract reasoning or forced attention. Subsequently, we might notice how this can be achieved easily through the form of memes. Nicholas Brown, speaking about the importance of memes as a form, says the formulaic and obvious templates of memes make them instantly recognizable to any savvy viewer. The form of the meme provides new context to an old template, making it evolve or break from form. These changes are co-opted by the next generation of memes made, thus bearing “the stamp of genealogy in each particular creation”. When memes are made as an introspective tool of culture and are made “authoritatively and compellingly they can promote an empathetic relationship to others, an active, creative and critical mode of being, and the very attainment of self.” (Brown) In that way, the form of memes, or the reason people make memes on the internet, is itself art, and a form of rhetoric. However, we have all seen and scrolled past low-effort or lazy memes. These can be considered as bad art because they are only made solely for relatability and virality. These creations present everything as familiar and repeatable, and never challenge us as a form of engagement, but only use passivity and agreeableness.

Source Pepe being used with racist connotations

If we come back to Pepe memes, we see that they have had a unique trajectory in meme culture. Pepe the frog is one of the earliest memes that has stuck around since the beginning of internet culture. It is a green human-like frog figure that first made its rounds on the internet as a part of a comic made by Matt Furie. In 2008, it soared in popularity on online community spaces like 4chan and Myspace. It existed before the inception of rage comics and by 2015 it had become one of the most recognizable and popular memes on Tumblr and Facebook. Pepe started out as a simple frog face that says the caption, “Feels good man”, showing appreciation and gratitude. It slowly evolved into a more ironic humorous meme through the 2010s and forward. Unfortunately, it was also used as a symbol of hate by the alt-right and neo-nazi communities, which compelled Matt Furie to take action and stop the connotations being attached to Pepe. It has since then been used mostly in a non-political context until 2020, when it became the face of the Hong Kong protests. According to our definitions of art, Pepe the Frog would be considered bad art for having such a purpose. Interestingly, while this is happening with the popular pepe memes that are shared on social media, there has been a rich and vibrant underground meme market that has erupted for reimagined pepes. These are memes where identifiable paintings, scenes, characters, individuals or scenarios are drawn with Pepe reimagined as the focal point. Since the mainstream Pepe memes have acquired a normie (or bad art) status, some of the meme community felt these kinds of reimagined Pepe memes needed to not be shared vehemently so that the quality of the meme is preserved. Hence, these kinds of memes have been named Rare Pepes. Rare Pepes are made with niche contexts that are usually difficult to understand right off the bat, and are not very effective tools of virality on the internet. For the purpose of being antiviral, and for the purposes of existing only for the sake of existing as an art piece in the form of pepe, I would call Rare Pepes as good art.

Source Pepes Lisa — a take on Mona Lisa using Pepe.

Rare Pepes are a good form of art because they are made and treated differently from conventional memes. It’s interesting to note that Pepes, unlike other memes, rarely have a storyboard, a caption or text imposed on top of the picture. The “rare” part of rare pepes is a reminder to the meme makers that these drawings exist on the internet inherently to be kept a secret from the mainstream meme culture. Once they are popularly shared, they lose their essence. In this way, not having a caption or a story — things that one would need for a meme to be viral, actually works in favour of the meme. This practice forms and maintains a tight knit community in the vast borderless expanse of the internet. To an outsider, pepe art can be clearly unaesthetic and downright ugly. But this too has good reason. Other than being another facet of anti virality, taking beautiful paintings or cultural objects and making them ugly through rare pepes can be considered a legit movement of art. Purposefully drawing ugly things is not a new phenomenon in art. Dadaism, Kitsch and Pop Art are all countermovements to break the conventions of art and keep challenging the form. While Dada and Kitsch showcase “meaninglessness” in their art by existing as anti-art and excessively gauche art respectively, Pop Art exists as a commentary on the glass ceiling of art critique. An avant-garde movement that makes the product fungible, but the form and aesthetics uniquely identifiable. Rare pepes similarly, flies in the face of what can be considered conventional art. It is similar to these art movements in that it does not adhere to these norms, and by recreating the Mona Lisa as Pepe the Frog, it is rejecting the elitism of art pieces such as this without actually ever having the intention to do so by the artist. In another line of reasoning, there are artists who are willfully bad painters, but the distinction here is that they were often technically skilled with a good command over colour and aesthetics, but choose to make their art purposefully ugly. Rare Pepes are similarly drawn and perceived as a high effort shitpost. The artist is clearly skillful in digital art, but chooses to do art that is, without context, ugly and off-putting.

Source A rare pepe NFT that sold for $320,000

The nature of memes have evolved to encompass many pre existing cultures and reimagine it on the internet. Since the internet is now a space through which people live their life, art has become a part of that existence through the form of memes. Memes on the internet are naturally a public good. Previously, Pepes were also of this nature. However, with the advent of NFTs — Non Fungible Tokens, this has changed drastically. Rare Pepes go for the highest amount of money as NFTs. This can be because the images and drawings that go as NFTs are supposedly novel and unique. The narrative that pepes are rare plays well into this phenomenon. NFTs are used to propagate the rareness of pepe art by claiming each pepe card is rarer than the last, hence inflating the perceived worth of the NFT. The highest pepe card recently has been valued at $500,000 worth of Bitcoin. The internet’s relationship with Rare Pepes have changed significantly, with the rarity of a Pepe NFT card being ranked, and there being a curation and a digital space for all these pepes to be displayed. It would be interesting to see how NFTs would affect pepes right now.

Harshita, this is very very interesting as a concept and it truly takes us to the heart of the current conversion about memes, art and value. You already know I love the way in which you have chosen to interpret the question. Taking pepe as the example allows you to take an approach that can be applied to memes in general and I am also very happy with the source voices that you have brought in to create a conceptual framework of art and good/bad art. Overall, it is a layered argument and that shows how ambitious you have been with this assignment. But having said that, we also need to understand that complexity of thought needs to be supported by simplicity. Right? And that’s where I feel your writing could progress more in terms of its reader-centricity. There are instances which I am sure are clear to you but you have to stop and think about whether they are equally clear to your reader and do you need to do more on your part to impart that clarity. Secondly, the source voices are very well-picked but you are not using them fully. Try to get into conversations with source voices instead of deploying them for pre-determined goals. That will open out new possibilities and will allow your argument to venture into unforeseen places. Don’t be hesitant when that happens. Finally, there are avoidable issues with formatting (for example the text is justified when it should be left aligned) and citations. But none of this should take away from the quality of narrative and argument that you have managed to present here. More than anything, what is clear to me is that you have enjoyed working on this assignment and in some ways that’s all that i can ask for. Good job!

GRADE: A- (A-, A, B+, B)

Works Cited

“The Abolition of Work.” The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, by Bob Black, Loompanics Unlimited, 1986. Accessed 25 December 2021.

Brown, Nicholas. “A Defense of Form: Internet Memes and Confucian Ritual.” Stance: An International Undergraduate Philosophy Journal, 2014, pp. 19–27. https://doi.org/10.5840/stance201472, https://www.pdcnet.org/stance/content/stance_2014_0007_0019_0027.

Burnham, Bo, director. Inside. 2021. netflix.com, https://www.netflix.com/title/81289483.

Stewart, Jessica. “What Makes Good Art? 12 Contemporary Artists Share Their Thoughts.” My Modern Met, 24 April 2017, https://mymodernmet.com/what-is-great-art/. Accessed 23 December 2021.

Winterson, Jeanette. Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013. Accessed 25 December 2021.