Pepelangelo: a Russian artist turned the popular meme into a work of art
The postmodern art cycle: photos becoming memes, people becoming memes, art becoming memes, and then memes becoming real fine art. There’s so much poetry about this process, especially when the Russians join the game.
Russian artist Olga Vishnevskaya creates reproductions of world masterpieces with Pepe the Frog’s face.
Pepe the Frog was introduced to the world in 2005 by American artist Matt Fury in the comic series Boy’s Club, where Pepe was one of the main characters. The meme life of Pepe started in 2008, after he had appeared on 4chan.
Pepe has been one of the most popular personifications of sadness on the Internet for a long time. Olga Vishnevskaya, who took the nickname @pepelangelo, gave this memasik a second life. She submerges Pepe the Frog into the world of famous masterpieces, changing the faces of the characters on the original paintings to Pepe’s.
The artist says that she has long been a 4chan hanger-on for a long time, and she has always liked Pepe.
As you might remember, due to curious events of 2016 Pepe the Frog was added to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)’s database of hate symbols, because some people associated it with racism and white suprematism. It is the context the Olga Vishnevskaya tries to debate with her art. She feels that it’s unfair that the famous frog was labelled a symbol of hatred. Her quest is to redeem Pepe’s good name and show that in fact he is “not a symbol of hatred, but a symbol of peace, love and solidarity”.
Bathing of the Red Horse by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin
The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci
Saturn Devouring His Son by Francisco Goya
Portrait of Dr. Gachet by Vincent van Gogh
The Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt van Rijn
Frida Kahlo
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