Design Inspiration From 15 Remakes of Famous Paintings

Culture is based on the old and the new. Mankind’s progress is, essentially, taking what already is there, and then adding on top of it. Sometimes, at least. We are, perhaps, the only species on our planet capable of creating art, and we have been doing so for tens of thousands of years. Given that we have been at it for such a long time, you could say we have gotten pretty good at it. Here are 15 remakes of famous paintings that will give you fresh inspiration.

1. Chaim Soutine’s Slaughtered Ox

Revisiting old works of art with a new, more modern eye, is an excellent example of how we build the new on top of the old. One of the first examples that comes to mind is Chaim Soutine’s Slaughtered Ox, which is a reworking of Rembrandt’s painting of the same name.

The two paintings are made nearly 300 years apart, and if you check them out, you will see how subtle differences transform Rembrandt’s classic masterpiece, into a modern (for that time, we mean) Expressionist painting.

Reworkings can be either a serious analysis of said old works, or comical reinterpretations of them, aiming to satirize society, or just have a bit of a laugh. To show you what we mean, and maybe also give you a bit of design inspiration, we have made a list of 15 paintings that are revisited in more modern forms.

2. Napoleon Crossing the Alps Meets Star Wars

We all know that Star Wars is one of the most important and influential cultural products to be produced in the past century, and that is a very tame way of putting it. It has inspired filmmakers, writers, and visual artists to create tonnes of works, whether they are fan fiction or new, original material.

Leonardo da Vinci, as you surely know, is one of the greatest thinkers who ever lived. A regular homo universalis, da Vinci’s interests were numerous; you could say that there was nothing in the world that did not interest him. His contributions to art and science are well documented, and his name is synonymous with the Renaissance.

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3. Famous Paintings Recreated – Mutant Ninja Turtles Potato Eaters

Sticking to the Star Wars universe, the pairing in this revisiting is pretty cool. On one hand, you have this famous painting of Napoleon Crossing the Alps, called Napoleon Crossing the Alps, by Jacques-Louis David; and on the other hand, you have Napoleon replaced with Darth Vader, who for many people is the face of Star Wars. These two characters share one thing in common: ambition. It is that ambition that leads to their downfall.

There will be two entries from Hillary White in this article, first, we will be showing you her reworking of Vincent Van Gogh’s famous The Potato Eaters. The original painting depicts Dutch potato farmers, sitting down in a dimly lit, run-down room for a poor dinner that consists mainly of one type of food: potatoes.

White’s painting replaces the potato farmers with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and that is a fantastic juxtaposition, as the Turtles’ lives sound pretty bleak, on paper at least.

“In a world where discovery is more important than delivery, it’s the people who find, remix, and direct attention to old stuff that should be rewarded, not the people who deliver it or sit on it waiting for someone to show up.”

– Joichi Ito

4. Van Gogh’s Caffe Terrace at Night

Hillary’s second entry on our list is also a reimagining of one of Van Gogh’s paintings, Caffe Terrace at Night. Van Gogh’s paintings all have a certain “dreamy” quality to them, and this one is no exception.

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5. Jo Pearson’s Childlike Mona Lisa

The artist’s love for bright, yellow lighting is excellently highlighted by his depiction of the night sky and dark buildings, in contrast with the well-lit terrace and cobbles. It is this dreamy quality that makes Hillary’s addition of Freddy Kruger to the painting an excellent observation of Vincent Van Gogh’s style. This is an awe-worthy but also hilarious famous paintings recreated.

6. Jo Pearson’s Birth of Venus with a Naive Touch

Up next in remakes of famous paintings, we will be having two entries from Jo Pearson. The Mona Lisa is Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous work. The woman with what many say is a mysterious smile is the image people associate with the Italian Renaissance man. Jo Pearson’s naive and child-like reworking of the Renaissance era masterpiece brings it into modern times, where art is whatever is called art. It is the denial of classic norms of beauty and style, perhaps making a statement that art is whatever the human mind produces.

This is another great example of famous paintings recreated.

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7. Banksy’s Commentary on Monet’s Water Lilies

Here, Jo Pearson revisits another Renaissance masterpiece, namely The Birth of Venus, by Sandro Botticelli. The original work was commissioned by the famous Medici family of Florence, and depicts, as the name suggests, the birth of the goddess Venus.

In the painting, Venus (which is modeled after a Venus marble sculpture in the Medici collection) is shown inside a sea shell, which in antiquity represented a metaphor for a woman’s vulva, arriving from the sea a fully grown woman.

Pearson gives the painting the same naive, minimal touch he gave to the Mona Lisa, so the message is pretty much the same. The naivete is made, perhaps, even more potent, as the theme of this painting is birth.

8. René Magritte’s La bonne foi in Atmospheric Photography

Our next entry is one by the mysterious British artist, Banksy. Here he uses Claude Monet’s 1919 painting Water Lilies as the inspiration for his work, turning Monet’s painting about the admiration of nature, and drawing inspiration from it, into a commentary about the current state of modern art.

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9. Remakes of Famous Paintings – Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles Reimagined

Not all the reimaginings on this list are paintings or sketches, themselves, as you are about to see in the next few entries. It would be a bit of a faux pas if we did not give a nod to the world of digital, so now we are going to see a few paintings made into photographs. First off, we have a René Magritte famous paintings recreated, titled La bonne foi.

Magritte, in case you didn’t know, is the Belgian surrealist artist responsible for the famous line “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”, and the smoking pipe is a frequent leitmotif in his paintings. Here, the painting is made into a pretty atmospheric photo.

You have probably figured out by now that we like Van Gogh, so we will go ahead and tell you that this isn’t the last Van Gogh-related item on our list. But we promise that there are only, like, two more Van Gogh works on the list.

There are three versions of this famous paintings recreated (Bedroom in Arles, or just The Bedroom, as the artist referred to it), and this photo is imitating the version that can be seen at the Art Institute of Chicago.

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10. Pixel Art: Van Gogh’s Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear

Now we delve into the world of pixel art, probably the most recent art form on our list. Once again, we have one of Vincent’s works, his famous Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear, which he painted soon after the incident in which he cut his ear off.

We don’t think that the artist who made this pixel version of the painting, JaeBoom Joo, had any particular message in mind when creating this work, other than the fact that it looks pretty cool.

11. Andy Warhol’s Banana Reimagined

Andy Warhol is the father of Pop Art, being the first to truly question exactly what art is. His famous Banana design was the cover of The Velvet Underground’s debut album, some call Andy Warhol as his name is the only text on it. The banana could be peeled, as the banana peel was, in fact, a sticker.

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12. Salvador Dali Meets Doctor Who

Salvador Dali and Doctor Who. Why isn’t this an actual episode?! This is another great example of reproductions of famous paintings.

13. The Starry Night in a Surreal Disco Space Battle

As we promised, this is the last Van Gogh famous paintings recreated entry on this list. The Starry Night is one of his most iconic paintings and one of our personal favorites. What’s interesting about the rendition is that the painting itself acts like a background for a surreal disco space battle somewhere near a Death Star. We need this on shirts, and we need it now!

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14. Caspar David Friedrich Wanderer Above The Sea of Fog

Every time we see this painting, we just stop and stare at it for a couple of hours. Wanderer in the Sea of Fog is a stunning painting by Caspar David Friedrich, in the year 1818.

We are pleased to say that the addition of the mobile phone isn’t all that intrusive, and even if we are biased and protective of this painting, we still have to admit that we rather enjoy this version, as well.

15. Edvard Munch The Scream

You probably know Edvard Munch as that painter who did that painting that everyone thinks is a Van Gogh painting (still not breaking our promise. Yay!), and the painting we’re talking about is his most famous one, The Scream. People hotly debate over what the figure is screaming about. This revisiting illustrates a more modern explanation for the Screamer’s anguish.

Wrapping up – Reproductions of Famous Paintings

That concludes our list of 15 modern interpretations of famous paintings. We hope you enjoyed seeing them as much as we did, and we hope you’ll enjoy writing comments in the comment section below, as much as we enjoyed writing this article.

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