About

The Art / The Artist is a series of side-by-side image macros depicting an event and the person behind it. While this meme began sincerely, focusing on artworks and the artist, similar to Art vs. Artist. However, in January 2020, the meme was used on Twitter to decry issues within Indian politics and culture.

Origin

On January 19th, 2020, Twitter^[1] user @mourya_empire tweeted the earliest available parody with an illustration of India and an illustration of ancient Indian teacher Chanakya (shown below).

Precursor

Prior to the Indian political variations, the "Art/Artist" format was used by artists to share artworks. On January 9th, 2020, Twitter^[2] user @hologr4m5 shared a selfie and a piece of artwork (shown below).

Spread

Over the next 24 hours, Twitter users used the form to describe different aspects of Indian culture, such as film. For example, Twitter^[3] Varuntyagi_09 shared a variation in which the artist is Indian film actor Salman Khan and the art being a "Blockbuster" (shown below, left). Others used the format for jokes about sports (example below, center).

On January 20th, the political party the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) began using the format to criticize Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and the Aam Admi Party (AAP). One variation received more than 17,600 likes and 5,900 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below, right).^[4]

That day, Mashable ^[5] India reported on the memes.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References