Victorian-era photographic subjects are transformed in ways they couldn’t possibly have imagined in a series of modified cabinet cards by artist Alex Gross. A buttoned-up young woman becomes Harley Quinn, a group of young men in suit jackets and cravats turn into the members of KISS, an ordinary-looking couple reveal themselves as Batman and Catwoman. For Gross, collecting found black-and-white photographs in the form of cabinet cards is all about seeing potential in unexpected places.

It’s almost like Gross pulls the very real people who sat for these photos so long ago through a portal and into the 20th century – never quite all the way to modern times. The hand-painted images retain a sense of vintage charm, recalling the golden age of comic books in the 1950s, even when depicting more contemporary characters like Arya Stark and the Night King from Game of Thrones.

Gross told Vivianite that vintage photographs and cabinet cards have a big influence on his work – extending beyond this series and into his full-scale paintings. Many have a similar feel of mish-mashed eras, all rendered in Gross’ signature vivid illustrative style.

“I have a medium-sized collection and many of the people in these photos appear in my work. And my favorite authors have also played a large part in my work. I think that Herman Hesse, W. Somerset Maugham, and George Orwell were all geniuses and their work has really connected with me for a long time now.”

Gross has released several books of his work, including Future Tense: Paintings by Alex Gross, 2010-2014, Discrepancies and Now and Then. The latter, released in 2012, features 98 of his cabinet card paintings produced over a four-year period.

The site and setting of Modernist masterpieces is a key ingredient of their aesthetic, so what, wondered one architect, would happen if these famous buildings were repositioned, set instead in oddly idyllic landscapes ala painter Thomas Kinkade?

Suddenly, the Eames House, Farnsworth House, Eames and Glass Houses are all transformed into surreal standouts against incongruous backdrops of cobblestone walks, colorful gardens and old-fashioned wells. Some, though, like Gehry’s Deconstructivist home (actually located on a residential street in Santa Barbara) look surprisingly cozy in an impossibly idyllic rural setting:

Robyniko explains that it started as a one-off suggestion: “A fellow architect I’m friends with on Twitter asked if anyone did modernist paintings in the style of Thomas Kinkade. It was one of those things you chuckle to yourself thinking about ‘what if’ and then move on with your life.

“But my family was gone for the weekend,” he explains, “so I decided to indulge my curiosity about how these famous modernist homes would fit into Kinkade’s universe.”

The architect started with well-known photographs of these iconic structures, then set to work in Photoshop hacking them into new environments. The result is weirdly jarring in some cases, and oddly satisfying in others.

Overall, the mixed effects show just how much buildings (and our images of them) rely on what surrounds them, for better or worse.

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?

These fictional structures seem to be ripped right out of the concept art for a sci-fi film, envisioning a world of architecture that’s totally out of scale with humans but fittingly grand for the environments in which they’re placed. ’Last Day’ by Ukrainian architect Mykhallo Ponomarkenko is the first prize-winning entry at this year’s Fairy Tales concept architecture competition, using classical painting techniques to tell stories of a huge artificial platform that uses anti-gravity engines to escape the laws of physics.

“Landscapes have always inspired me to put something weird, unreal and out of human scale into them,” says Ponomarkenko. “Something not feasible and not practical that contrasts with the natural surroundings, but also exists at the same scale. These satirical interventions lead to new ideas and feelings about nature – they make the viewer more aware about the environment and our harmful impact on it.”

“We are flat surface creatures. Sometimes I feel that we crave it so much that the planet is going to be turned into pavement so cars can go anywhere, and our industries could continue expanding. The ‘Saturn Rings’ in my proposal represent these flat surface desires but in a more poetic, optimistic, and friendly manner.”

Organized by Blank Space, an online architecture platform, the fourth annual Fairy Tales competition announced three winners selected from over 60 project submissions. Winners are awarded prizes of $2,500, $1,500 and $1,000, respectively, and select projects will be featured in the fourth print edition of Fairy Tales: When Architecture Tells a Story. Read the story that goes along with ‘Last Day’ and see the rest of the entries over at Blank Space.

“The proposals put forth in the Fairy Tales competition create entire worlds of the imagination – they build their immersive stories as much by what they don’t say, as by what they do,” says Blank Space. “The winning entries in this year’s competition include oblique references to current events, mundane daily activities and human emotions that we all easily relate to – they make visible how we shape space, and in turn, how space shapes us.”

“The images and narratives are so wildly outlandish, and yet, so grounded that it seems like we could mistakenly stumble into any of them. They are personal and powerful – a testament to the power of architecture as a world-builder.”

Vincent Van Gogh is having a good pop culture week on the interwebs with multiple humorous GIF treatments and stunning animations of his works exposing classic art to new generations. In this series, artist Kajetan Obarski (known as Kiszkiloszki) mashes up masterpieces by the infamous Dutch painter and others with contemporary life, bringing them firmly into the computer age.

Leonardo da Vinci gleefully photoshopping a range of different animals into his ‘Lady with an Ermine,’ Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel God plays pool, a 17th-century lady rocks out with a skeleton and Van Gogh himself receives a very insensitive gift. There’s chocolate flinging, baby throwing and sexting gone awry, not to mention the inevitable conclusion to Magritte’s men falling from the sky.

Classic art has gotten a big cultural boost lately thanks to projects that appeal to our sense of humor, like the excellent Classical Art Memes. While more conservative art historians may lament that the works aren’t being appreciated in their original context, as the artists meant for them to be, these projects have centuries-old paintings flying around the internet like cat videos, so it’s hard to complain.