Joseph Ducreux
A famous portrait entitled, “Portrait de l’artiste sous les traits d’un moqueur,” or “Self-portrait of the artist in the guise of a mockingbird” dates back to 1793. It is a remarkably detailed self portrait by highly respected French painter Joseph Ducreux, who once worked for the court of Louis XVI. However, before two years ago, few would recognize his work.
Today, many identify Ducreux’s famous “selfie,” not as a famous work of art, but as a meme. Because the artist’s clothing, hairstyle, and accessories making him easily identifiable as an 18th century figure, people began adding captions to the portrait which re-phrased the words of famous hip-hop/pop songs in antiquated language. For example, instead of “Teach me how to Dougie,” Ducreux asks, “Instruct me in the the art of dancing the Douglas.”
In his passage on meme’s, Patrick Davison discusses how many memes are artifacts from the web which, unlike content from places such as YouTube or Wikipedia, avoid attribution. In other words, it is often difficult or impossible to discern their origins. He asks, “…why do certain memes eschew attribution?” However, it would seem that one would be hard pressed to find any memes which identify the author by naming the author, which is how Davison chooses to define attribution.
Perhaps we can identify Mr. Ducreux simply by doing a little research into his painting, however, we’ll never know who chose to use his painting for a little bit of harmless, humorous virtual vandalism. Mr. Davison was right to observe this. But, perhaps he was wrong to restrict his observation to only some memes.
You bring up another dynamic of the attribution issue. The work of art has been appropriated by the online community in the “like a sir” vein of jokes. Its been so far removed from its original intent that the memes that use this picture become derivative works. Without an art history class, you might never have had a reason to look up the history of this work of art. This might support the argument against CMC being destructive to language (the overly formal script that usually plays over this meme) and culture (as it has caused you to look up the facts about this work of art).
I think this is an interesting example, and I think it highlights the role of language in meme generation. What makes the meme funny is the juxtaposition of something contemporary (hip hop lyrics) with the old portrait and old style language. I think you can generalize this to lots of image macro memes. I mean, we all love cat pictures, but LOLcats spread because of the language play involved. Which is a funnier caption on a cat picture: “May I have a cheeseburger” or “I can haz cheezburger?”
I forgot all about this painting until now. One of the interesting things about this painting is how is evolved in a couple different ways but still holds the original intent of humor. It went from a painting that made people smirk or laugh in museums, to now a jpeg with a boarder caption as punch line.
The distinctive property of memes as a cultural artifact is that attribution is unnecessary. This omission of traditional authorship allows for flexibility and freedom for redistribution. Memes gains momentum through multiple recreations and people feel welcome to contribute as it is “transmitted, transformed, and forwarded.” Memes become an oasis for reinterpretation in a world otherwise confined by outdated copyright laws.