70 Classical Art Memes That Masterfully Mix Contemporary Life With Classical Art (New Pics)

The person behind the Varkey pseudonym is a 31-year-old safety engineer by trade. Although he has no formal training in art historypainting, and the like, his appreciation for the art form is nonetheless passionate. “I love classical art, history, and geography,” Varkey told Bored Panda in a previous interview. “I don’t have any background as a creator or artist but I have always loved classical art.”

The project, like many other meme pages, was born during the pandemic in 2020. “During the beginning of 2020 when the lockdowns had just started I came across the posters by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine about the COVID precautions in which they had put masks and gloves on characters in some famous classical paintings,” the creator recalled of the page’s inception story. “I fell in love with this idea instantly and I wanted to do something like that.”

Varkey tries to make these old-timey paintings as relatable to a 21st-century audience as possible. “Whenever I see a painting I try to imagine how the painting would look if it was painted in the 21st century. I also try to correlate it with pop culture,” he added. “I am an aesthete, I like looking at beautiful things, and what is more beautiful than a classical painting by Bouguereau or Carl Bloch or Vida Gabor?”

Varkey says that one of his biggest inspirations is digital artist Mehmet Geren, whom we have featured here on Bored Panda. Geren blends pieces of classical art with modern culture and creates a surreal kind of world. Some of his creations include van Gogh with a skateboard, Michelangelo’s David dressed as Tyler Durden from Fight Club, and the Girl With The Pearl Earring smoking a cigarette.

“I love all his works,” Varkey told Bored Panda previously. “It is difficult to develop a unique and distinct style nowadays but I guess it doesn’t matter because there is an audience for all of us.”

“I don’t think about it much because I do it mainly for my satisfaction, whenever I create something I feel content. And yes, whenever people appreciate what I do, it makes me want to keep doing it. If there is a market, I would like to sell my works as merchandise or prints in the future,” he pondered in 2022.

As of 2025, there’s no merchandise yet, but Varkey’s page boasts a whopping 100k followers. Back in 2022, the creator let us in on his creative process as well. Where does the inspiration for these sarcastic captions come from?

“Sometimes it is difficult, it depends on your mood or if you are busy with something. But classical art always brightens up my mood,” Varkey told us. “I have some friends who are very funny and are extremely sarcastic, so I also get ideas when I talk to them,” he added.

Creating these classical art memes also helps the creator discover paintings he has never seen before. Varkey gives priority to paintings that portray casual, everyday scenes. These include couples flirting, families spending quality time with each other, and paintings with lots of details: the more there are in a painting, the higher the likelihood there will be something relatable for the modern audience.

Last year, we interviewed Varkey again, and he let us in on the secret of how to stay popular on Instagram for so long. The creator thinks that the relatability of classical art memes comes down to their aesthetic value. “I think people enjoy them so much because of the humor and the aesthetic appeal of the painting,” he told us. “I personally prefer to only post where the paintings are aesthetic. And I use the same font so that my posts stand out.”

Memeing classical art may be one of the best contemporary attempts to make it interesting and relatable. Sure, it is aesthetically pleasing and masterfully painted, but how relatable can it be when almost all of the portraits were commissioned, featured people of the upper class, and were painfully white-centric?

As Sherry Tseng writes for the 34th Street Magazineback when the paintings were created, they couldn’t really be considered mainstream. “For a work to be mainstream, it has to appeal to the diversity of the audience.”

Despite its flaws, classical works of art are still lauded as masterpieces and the standard of beautiful aesthetic. “There is credit due to the skill and ability of the artists in developing distinctive artistic styles and making gains in artistic innovation,” Tseng posits. “The problem comes with the name lent to subcategory of ‘classical art.’ By labeling it as so, we’re perpetuating this vision that classical art (aka unrepresentative art) is the ideal. But it’s not.”

What do you think about turning classical paintings into memes, Pandas? Is it a great way to make them more relatable and accessible? And, if you have a favorite piece of artwork, how would you caption it if you were running a classical art memes page? Let us know in the comments!

And if you’d like to see more from Varkey, check out our previous articles about the page, here and here!