About

Couple Talking, also known as Paar Im Gesprach, is a Classical Art meme that utilizes the painting Paar Im Gesprach from German artist Simon Glucklich. The meme template is used either as an exploitable image macro with a conversation taking place between the two or as a proto example to the Bro Explaining meme trend.

Origin

Sometime between 1880 and 1890 German artist Simon Glucklich created the painting Paar Im Gesprach, which stands for "Couple Talking." The painting was last sold at auction on November 16th, 2007, according to Artnet^[1], which describes the painting as oil on canvas. The first instance of the painting being posted online comes from October 28th, 2014, on the website TheToast^[2] as part of a collection of images in an article about classical art showing women having a horrible time (shown below).

The first time the art piece was used as a meme was on August 19th, 2016, by Tumblr user BERTANLICIOUS^[3] who used it in the way referenced by the name, as a couple having a casual conversation (shown below).

Spread

On May 29th, 2017, Imgur user DanNy82^[4] uploaded a photoshopped version of the meme to have the man holding a cellphone up to the woman, who now appears to be bored as she states that she's seen every meme (shown below).

On October 22nd, 2021, Redditor runvcruns^[5] uploaded a version of the meme in which the man is trying to convince the woman to fall for a Multi-Level Marketing plan, also known as a pyramid scheme, to which she is exasperated (shown below).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References