Russian artist paints Pepe the Frog like you’ve never seen him before
Pepe the Frog - Portrait of Dr. Gachet, 2016, Olga Vishnevsky
Pepe the Frog - Girl with a Pearl Earring, 2016, Olga Vishnevsky
Pepe The Frog - Mona Lisa, La Gioconda Pepe The Sad Frog, 2017, Olga Vishnevsky
Pepe The Frog - Harlequin, 2016, Olga Vishnevsky
Pepe the Frog With Grapes, Young Sick Bacchus Pepe, 2016, Olga Vishnevsky
24 March 2017
Text
Elise Morton
Have you ever looked at popular internet meme Pepe the Frog and thought “Hmm, I’m not sure I can totally agree with the views he represents, but I sure do wonder what he would look like in the style of Van Gogh”? Us too. Thankfully, St Petersburg-based painter Olga Vishnevsky had just the same thought.
Enter Pipelangelo, the Etsy page where Vishnevsky sells her extraordinary oil paintings, bringing the internet meme to canvas. Here Pepe takes on the role of such iconic figures as the Mona Lisa (1503, Leonardo da Vinci), Henry VIII (1536–1537, Hans Holbein the Younger) and the Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665, Johannes Vermeer).
Stay tuned for more paintings in the works — soon Pepe will appear in an interpretation of Petrov-Vodkin’s Bathing of a Red Horse (1912). But will Pepe be riding the horse or the horse itself? Only time will tell.
If any of these sound to your liking but you don’t have a few hundred dollars spare, you can catch Pepe on Instagram here.
