Despise not the Racketeer
Joseph Ducreux’s Archaic Rap. It’s worth your while to watch one of the great RocketBoom “Know Your Meme” videos.
I never thought my art history background & Internet LOLs would ever cross paths. I rather liked Ducreux’s paintings—in an era filled with cute imagery best replicated on a box of sweets, he (like his contemporary, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt) worked to create more animated imagery in his paintings. This one seems so fresh to us because it’s an ephemeral pose we see all the time in real life, but not one we ever see in the stiffer confines of art.
Now that I’ve ruined that for you…