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Georges Seurat, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”

In an Emoji History of Art, ND Stevenson Playfully Recreates Iconic Paintings

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. That’s 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, he’d 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.

an emoji recreation of two people embracing above flowers
Gustav Klimt, “The Kiss.” All images © ND Stevenson

Starting with a basic background image, Stevenson adds numerous elements, like a fork standing in for a pitchfork in Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” or an upside-down red exclamation point in place of a necktie in René Magritte’s “The Son of Man.” For Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” a bowl and a cloud provide the basis of the subject’s famous blue-and-white head wrap; a toilet stands in for Duchamp’s urinal; and numerous flowers, evil eyes, books, cheese, and urns make up the patterns of Klimt’s embracing figures in “The Kiss.”

It’s worth diving into Stevenson’s post for more emoji recreations.

left: two emoji people holding a fork. right" a woman with a blue bowl and cloud hat with a turkey gown
Left: Grant Wood, “American Gothic.” Right: Johannes Vermeer, “Girl with a Pearl Earring”
an emoji man with a green apple over his face
René Magritte, “The Son of Man”
left: a man with a bleeding art grasps at a pen, ink, and paper. right: a toilet with r mutt 1917 written on it
Left: Jacques-Louis David, “The Death of Marat.” Right: Marcel Duchamp, “Fountain”
left: people sit at a counter with coffee. right: four clocks appear among a shifting landscape
Left: Edward Hopper, “Nighthawks.” Right: Salvador Dalí, “The Persistence of Memory”
the dancer emoji appears to swing amid a lush landscape with a soccer player, two baby angles, and a man in the foreground
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, “The Swing”
left: a nude man reaches his hand toward santa in the sky with several baby angels. right: a man with gray hair holding a steak and legs
Left: Michelangelo, “The Creation of Adam” detail of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Right: Francisco Goya, “Saturn Devouring His Son”
a still life of sunflowers made of emojis
Vincent van Gogh, “Sunflowers”

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