A little girl from William Bouguereau’s 1886 painting ‘Au pied de la falaise’ looks out over the city of Memphis from the side of a seven-story building, freed from the original work’s confines within the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. French street artist Julien de Casabianca is known for moving the subjects of famous paintings from the hallowed walls of perfectly-lit museums and into the streets, wheat pasting them many times larger than life onto urban surfaces. This particular monumental work coincides with the artist’s exhibition and workshop at the Brooks Museum.

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Brooklyn Street Art asked de Casabianca why this piece resonates for the artist. “She seems melancholic, I wanted to give her a second life in the real life, liberate her from the frame,” he says. “I feel always guilty when I leave from a wall where I pasted a child, as in Nuart Aberdee in Scotland, because even they are giants, I feel they are so fragile in this violent world and in this contemporary world. She’s a time traveller, she doesn’t know our new world and she’s probably surprised and moved.”

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It’s not the only character from within the museum to come to life in the streets of Memphis; the artist met with museum officials earlier this year to choose 20 figures from the Brooks’ permanent collection to place around the city. Other paintings chosen for the project include a two-story installation of Cloar’s Wedding Party and a 20-foot high selection from Luca Giordano’s The Slaying of the Medusa.

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De Casabianca has wheat pasted works like this all over the world, in fact, as part of his ongoing series “Outing Project.” You can find out where to see the works in person and follow their progress on Instagram.

Some centuries-old works of art are so imprinted upon the collective consciousness, our brains recognize them even when they’re blurred, disguised, abstracted or otherwise remixed. You could break them down into their simplest elements and somehow, you’d still be able to identify them as the Mona Lisa, Michelangelo’s statue of David, American Gothic or Nighthawks at the Diner. After previously breaking down images of iconic celebrities and pop culture figures, artist Adam Lister has turned his attention to ‘Art History 101.’

He works in watercolor on cold press paper, and each piece is smaller than it looks, typically measuring no more than 8 by 10 inches. These representations of highly recognizable subjects aren’t simply pixelated in the way a computer would render the image; their shapes and most important visual elements are interpreted in a more thoughtful and intentional way to create a result that’s not simply a copy, but a work of art in its own right.

“My process deals with taking the memory of an image, and highlighting its complexity and simplicity at the same time,” says Lister in his artist statement. “These paintings are influenced by geometric thinking and a desire to capture the briefness of a mental picture.”

The paint takes to the paper in a way that almost suggests a texture of velvet or felt, the lines and edges crisp, the colors no less effective for having been simplified and separated into rectilinear shapes. Can you name all of the works pictured here without double-checking your guesses at Lister’s website?

Greek gods and other figures from antiquity tower over a very different world from the one in which they were born, entwined with contemporary graffiti on building facades and other urban surfaces across the globe. The style of PichiAvo, a Spanish street art duo composed of individuals nicknamed Pichi and Avo, is undeniably distinctive, taking imagery usually associated with static, immobile stone statues and enlivening it with a sense of movement and lots of vivid color.

Sometimes, these figures are playfully interacting with the imagery around them; at other times, they’re translucent against their colorful backdrops, almost like ghosts temporarily visiting our realm and checking out what we’ve done with the place. The duo began working together in 2007, painting their creations all over the streets of Spain. Since then, their work has only become more complex.

They were particularly prolific in 2016, splashing a cherub across a five-story apartment building in Denmark and completing a mural of Prometheus in Murcia, Spain for the Festival Arte Urban Mar Minor. They also painted a pair of Greek figures on the side of an abandoned factory building in Valencia, Spain. For the latter, they tried some new techniques, including using spray paint for the background and mixing it with acrylic paint to create the statues.

The duo recently did an interview with Global Street Art, explaining how their styles work together and why they choose these particular visuals.

“We started our style thinking we should bring everything we know about art together and adding graffiti to help bring classical art back to life. The best way we could think of to do this was by working with classical sculpture, sculptures that today are white but people don’t realise they used to be covered in paint, so our painting the figures with the graffiti is our small tribute to the classical sculptures that have marked many historical recognised artists.”

Most baristas who go the extra mile to make a cute design in the foam on top of your latte or mocha manage to illustrate a heart, a swan, a cat or maybe an owl, not an entire Vincent van Gogh painting. But there’s always an overachiever, isn’t there? South Korean barista Lee Kang-Bin shows off his illustrative prowess by reproducing masterpieces in nothing but foam and food coloring, destined to be destroyed as soon as someone gets thirsty.

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From ‘Starry Night’ and Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’ to Captain Jack Sparrow and scenes from Disney movies, the artist faithfully recreates iconic imagery so impressive, it would be hard to take that first sip. Customers wait up to 15 extra minutes for one of Lee Kang-Bin’s creations, and it’s not hard to see why.

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The 26-year old owns Cafe C-THROUGH in Seoul, so there’s nobody to tell him he can’t spend his time on the clock any way he wants, and customers line up to temporarily ‘own’ one of his paintings, anyway. The self-taught artist honed his skills over ten years on the job, and calls his work ‘creamarts.’

https://www.instagram.com/p/BUJbUHwhco-/?taken-by=leekangbin91&hl=en

To see more videos of Lee Kang-Bin in action, check out his Instagram, @leekangbin91.

In centuries past, art has mostly depicted religious and political figures alongside artist’s models and ordinary people, but as future generations look back on our era, they’ll see a confusing mishmash of celebrities and fictional characters interwoven into our fine art legacy. Often removed from their context and mixed together, figures from music, movies, television and comic books presented as art subjects make a statement on our obsession with image, fame, heroes and the qualities we project onto the most famous faces our culture has created.

Star Wars Recreations of Famous Photographs by David Eger

For ‘365 Days of Clones,’ Canadian art teacher David Eger recreated famous photographs using Star Wars figurines, including play son ‘Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima,’ ‘Abbey Road,’ ‘American Gothic’ and even the iconic flying-across-the-moon-on-a-bicycle scene from E.T.

Models Turned Celebrities with Body Paint

Models are used as the basis of living sculptures, their features changed with globs of paint, plastic, paper, clothes and wigs so they roughly resemble celebrities like Karl Lagerfeld, Steve Jobs and Pamela Anderson. Artist Marie-Lou Desmeules refers to her creations as ‘pop zombies,’ asking viewers to consider what these artistic impersonations say about image in our society.

Terra-cotta Characters by Lizabeth Eva Rossof

Rather than the nameless soldiers of old who made up the historical Chinese terra-cotta army, the Xi’an-American Warriors by Lizabeth Eva Rossof bear the faces of Spiderman, Bart Simpson, Batman, Shrek, Mickey Mouse and other fictional characters, reflecting both the far reach of America’s media influence and modern-day China’s industry of counterfeiting these copyrighted properties.

Hero-Glyphics by Josh Lane

In ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, artist Josh Lane saw a graphic style of art that lends itself surprisingly well to modern-day cartoon and comic book styles. For his ‘Hero-Glyphics’ series, he dropped modern characters into poses he thought best fit each one’s personality, using background details and symbols to tell a story.

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Mashup Masterpieces 48 Fusions Of Art And Contemporary Pop Culture