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Humanity’s creative drive is unassailable – and the coronavirus outbreak has already inspired some minor masterworks
Two Russians – a man and a woman –­ gaze gloomily from a photograph. He is wearing glasses, she a floral pinafore. In the foreground, so close that it looks enormous, is a kitchen fork. It is, unmistakably, American Gothic. Except this couple are inside their apartment, standing in front of a window, through which we see huge tower blocks.
Confinement has, for lots of us, led to hours of dead time. Our cultural institutions, which house the pinnacles of human artistic achievements, are all closed. And so the people have taken art into their own hands, meticulously reconstructing famous paintings using themselves as the subjects. The American Gothic pastiche comes from a Russian “isolation” Facebook group in which we also see The Townley Discobolus replicated by a nude man holding a saucepan lid, and the ruffs in an Anthony van Dyck portrait reconstructed using toilet rolls. Over on the Instagram account Covid Classics, which is run by “four roommates who love art and are indefinitely quarantined”, are recreations of Magritte’s The Son of Man, Diego Velázquez’s Old Woman Frying Eggs, and the Arnolfini Portrait with the bride’s gown constructed from a sleeping bag. Continue reading...