Where can you find Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Jan Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring, and a self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh together? Grabbing a cup of coffee at Central Perk!—or so it appears in this digital collage by Dan Cretu (CRAY-too). The artist places faces from art history into a photo showing the cast of the TV show Friends.
Cretu, a Romanian artist, makes digital collages that combine iconic examples of fine art and recognizable scenes from popular culture. “I start from something that the viewer already knows and give it a contemporary twist,” Cretu explains.
In art, appropriation means intentionally borrowing an image or object and changing its meaning. “All objects and things around us daily are possible subjects for me,” Cretu says.