a history of laughs in 2024

meme methodologies

It’s a cliche of history-writing that you can open up any book on any period and it will say there was a “crisis” occurring. Times are unprecedented, technology is disruptive, the vibes are always out of joint. We are in a crisis. Memes are crisis art, like all art.

In 1863, Charles Baudelaire described modernity as “the transitory, the fleeing, the contingent” part of art — the you had to be there. He was ranting against the classicism of painters who depicted scenes of ancient Rome using techniques from the Renaissance. Baudelaire preferred Constantin Guys—an artist who focused on the coal-carriers, fashionable ladies, and winding streets of the real-life Paris they both lived in.

a Constantin Guys picture

I feel the same way about memes as Baudelaire felt about Constantin Guys. I find excitement, solace and passion in art that gets down into the grain of life as we live it rat…