Classical Art Memes Prove People Have Been Tired and Nosy Since Before Indoor Plumbing

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I love a museum, but after forty minutes every painting starts looking like my relatives waiting on a casserole. Classical art memes finally gave those poor people something to say, and this fella is speaking for me.

I have stood at my own front door exactly like that, praying for a little drizzle so I could text a rain check with a clear conscience. Everybody in these paintings is as tired, nosy and broke as we are.

Some traditions are older than the Constitution.

She deserves a demon who shows up on time.

Tip him double for that one.

The tree can plant itself.

Button mashing, 15th century edition.

Bold cinematography choice.

Ray must have owned a leaf blower.

Right audience, wrong demographic.

Premium tier includes the bucket.

Grief, but make it metamorphosis.

Grandma never saw it coming.

One avocado just tipped it.

Doomscrolling, clay edition.

Father's heard stranger, but not by much.

Bluetooth has its flaws, but not this one.

Karl, see me after class.

Commute of dreams, and still suspicious.

Chair clothes are the scariest demon here.

Honestly, what a supportive baby.

Now I read one paragraph and need a nap.

What gets me is how many of these folks look like they just opened a bill. Funny painting memes figured out that a woman weighing flour in the 1600s has the exact face I make at the grocery store now, and I have made that face in the parking lot too, bless me. Put a subscription notice under a pretty girl at a water pump and suddenly it isn’t art anymore, it’s my streaming budget.

I was raised by women who could insult you from inside a lace collar, so the gossip in these paintings feels like coming home. Renaissance memes, or whatever century that settee is from, are full of people being petty in their Sunday best, and I respect it. I have said something sweet with my mouth and something ugly with my eyebrows at more than one baby shower. Those two ladies on the sofa would have eaten me alive, and I’d have thanked them for the recipe.

My favorite comfort is that people have been complaining the whole entire time. Art history memes keep proving it: some fella pressing words into a clay tablet thousands of years ago was already sure the kids were ruined and the world was ending. Meanwhile, I’m awake at three in the morning replaying something dumb I said in 1994, the same as that poor soul in the engraving, just with a worse nightgown.

I once stood in front of a Rembrandt for ten minutes trying to look cultured, and the whole time I was wondering if I’d left the curling iron on. For hundreds of years we paid painters to make people look noble and serious, and then the internet came along and handed every one of them a speech bubble. Turns out they were thinking about supper and how bad their feet hurt. It’s the most honest thing that’s ever happened to a museum.

And it’s sweet, if you ask me. When I see a man from two centuries ago dreading a party he agreed to go to, I feel a little less crazy for hiding in my car in the Kroger parking lot. People have always been tired and nosy and a little bit broke, and they’ve always needed somebody to laugh with about it. We just have better snacks now, and I have eaten most of them.

The frames are gold. The feet still hurt. The gossip is eternal.

If you’re not ready to leave the museum yet, Turns Out History Memes Are Just Group Chats With Better Hats and Worse Outcomes is a good next room, and Medieval History Memes Have Taught Me That Hollywood Owes the Middle Ages an Apology will undo everything the movies taught you. For something more modern, 29 Accidental Renaissance Photos That Unintentionally Look Like Old Master Paintings proves your cousin’s cookout belongs in a gallery. No flash photography, please.

Katie writes about museums, old paintings and other subjects that get a lot more honest once somebody adds a speech bubble.