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.

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

Dressed in garments from centuries long past, figures from classical paintings peer out the windows of metro cars, vend souvenirs, browse comics and otherwise interact with unlikely scenes in modern-day Naples, Italy. Artist Alexey Kondakov is back with another round of ‘Art History in Contemporary Life,’ his mash-up series that gives the world a new perspective on paintings from the distant past.

The Ukrainian artist is known for relocating angels, royals, knights, the Virgin Mary and other subjects from classical works by artists like Hans Holbein and William Bouguereau into modern-day scenes with careful attention to light and shadow for a convincing result.

Though the subjects remain painterly and the backdrops are crisp photographs of everyday city environments, the blended images read less like Photoshopped collages and more like finished works ready to be hung on museum walls.

Given this new context, the figures suddenly seem more real than they ever did before, as if we really could come across them playing harps in subway stations or hanging out in grungy bars.

Naples is a fitting choice for the latest series, simultaneously giving a nod to Italy’s history as birthplace of High Renaissance Art and illustrating how much the city has changed over the past 500 years. Previous iterations of ‘Art History in Contemporary Life’ were set in the artist’s hometown of Kiev, Ukraine. Check out more images from the Napoli Project at Kondakov’s website or Facebook.

Masterpieces from Greek antiquity through the nineteenth century are literally seen through a modern lens, remade into action figures or inserted into contemporary settings, in this collection of remixed classic art.From auto mechanics styled and posed like Caravaggio subjects to storm troopers as Flemish upperclassmen, these projects bring centuries-old aesthetics into the 21st century.

Auto Mechanics in Renaissance-Style Portraits by Freddy Fabris

Inspiration struck when photographer Freddy Fabris accompanied a friend into a cluttered auto shop, the mechanics and their tools seeming like the perfect subjects for Rembrandt and Renaissance-style portraits. The award-winning series mimics such masterpieces as Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper and Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam.

Classic Statue Action Figures

David, The Thinker and Venus de Milo come to life in the form of posable action figures so you can see these classic statues like you’ve never seen them before. The pre-sale for most of these figures has already ended, but ‘David’ is still available for roughly $40.

Classic Art Figures in Contemporary Settings

Angels and other subjects from classic paintings hang out in dive bars, subways and alleys in Alexey Kondakov’s series ‘Art History in Contemporary Life,’ including Hans Holbein’s ‘The Ambassadors’ and the otherworldly female figures of Bougereau.

Lego Tribute to Classic Art

Iconic works by Magritte, Vermeer and Van Eyck get the Lego treatment in a fun photographic series by Marco Pece.

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Classic Art In A Modern World 35 Masterpieces Reimagined

Anonymous subjects from under-appreciated paintings that hang forlorn in secondary museums, overlooked and nearly forgotten, come to life in the streets with an interactive art project called ‘Outings.’ Dreamed up by French artist Julien de Casabianca, the ongoing, international participative project invites you to snap photos of lesser-known portraits hanging in museums, print them out and paste them onto urban surfaces in cities like London, Paris and Madrid.

Taking these characters out of their cultural and historical context, participants breathe new life into them, appointing them as watchers over a new and unfamiliar world, making their faces far more visible than they are when hanging in small frames beside more famous and notable works.

The process is simple: discreetly capture any images you like in a museum or gallery with your phone and follow the Outings Project instructions for importing and editing the image in Photoshop. Have it printed in a local shop, and then use wallpaper glue and a brush to adhere it to a wall – the grittier the better, for proper contrast. Get more info and apply for a grant for the price of printing at the Outings website.