The history of painting may seem somewhat cyclical: from the two-dimensional baseness of hieroglyphics to the Renaissance’s perspective-prizing realism to impressionism’s fuck-you to imagistic perfection and back to crudeness with Cubism and Abstract Expressionism’s crusade against form, then back and forth simultaneously with postmodernism’s rehashing of everything, the passing millennia suggest that constant visual evolution spurs a distorted form of death and rebirth. Adam Lister’s 8-Bit Watercolors (spotted via Colossal) include reproductions of iconic paintings and images that deform paintings like Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte and Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring by applying early digital visuals to pre-digital works — layering proverbial lens upon proverbial lens. Appearing at once more modern and more antiquated than their imitated subjects, these Nintendo and Atari-inspired paintings reveal the easy conflation of obsolescence and novelty among decontextualized works, subjecting us to a dizzying form of artistic and technological time travel.
Image credit: Adam Lister
Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci
Image credit: Adam Lister
Mona Lisa at the Louvre
Image credit: Adam Lister
The Kiss, Gustav Klimt
Image credit: Adam Lister
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Georges-Pierre Seurat
Image credit: Adam Lister
Wonder Woman
Image credit: Adam Lister
The Son of Man, René Magrittte
Image credit: Adam Lister
Breaking Bad
Image credit: Adam Lister
Superman
Image credit: Adam Lister
Nighthawks, Edward Hopper
Image credit: Adam Lister
Girl With a Pearl Earring, Johannes Vermeer
Image credit: Adam Lister
Sunflowers, Vincent Van Gogh
Image credit: Adam Lister
The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci
Image credit: Adam Lister
American Gothic, Grant Wood