Getty Museum Launches Home Art Challenge, Public Recreates Masterpieces

The Getty Museum in Los Angeles has launched a social media challenge inviting the public to recreate famous artworks using household items during the COVID-19 pandemic. The initiative, announced via Twitter, encourages participants to reinterpret masterpieces with objects found at home. Results range from hilarious to impressive: Jean-Étienne Liotard's still life with ceramics and cutlery is recreated on an IKEA tray with empty Coca-Cola cans; Jacques Joseph Tissot's portrait of the Marquise de Miramon is humorously mimicked by a girl wrapped in a pink blanket; Claude Monet's Haystacks in Winter is reproduced with boxes in perspective; Paulus Potter's animal paintings are stylized with clothes on a carpet, complete with clouds. However, the Getty was not the first to conceive this idea. The Instagram account @covidclassics, run by four American roommates, had already been recreating classics like Jacques-Louis David's Death of Marat, works by Vermeer, Magritte, and Goya during self-isolation, gaining 41,400 followers with just a dozen posts. Their initiative includes behind-the-scenes photos. In Italy, the MiBACT launched a similar campaign called "L'arte ti somiglia" to promote Italian museums.