Masterpieces of Western Art with All Gluten Products Removed: See Works by Dalí, Cézanne, Van Gogh & Others

left: Johannes Ver­meer, The Milk­maid. right: Arthur Coulet, d’après Johannes Ver­meer

It has been sug­gest­ed plau­si­bly that Ver­meer’s kitchen maid is mak­ing bread por­ridge, which puts stale bread—there is an unusu­al amount of bread on the table—to good use by com­bin­ing it with milk and a few oth­er ingre­di­ents to make a fill­ing mash or meal. 

- Wal­ter Liedtke, Depart­ment of Euro­pean Paint­ings,  The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

It’s a mat­ter for con­jec­ture. Per­haps Ver­meer want­ed to title his paint­ing The Bread Por­ridge Maid, but caved to mar­ket research sug­gest­ing that Milk­maid would bet­ter appeal to what Liedtke calls “male view­er’s amorous mus­ings.”

Recent­ly, graph­ic artist Arthur Coulet made bread a focal point in Vermeer’s Milk­maid and oth­er icon­ic works, iron­i­cal­ly by Pho­to­shop­ping it out.

His online Gluten Free Muse­um is a nod to détourne­ment, manip­u­la­tions of exist­ing works born of Let­ter­ist Inter­na­tion­al and the Sit­u­a­tion­ists. Gone are the crusty loaves, fields gold­en with wheat, and any­thing con­tain­ing grains that could cause dis­com­fort to those afflict­ed by gluten intol­er­ance or celi­ac dis­ease.

Even the pitch­fork in Grant Wood’s Amer­i­can Goth­ic gets the dig­i­tal heave ho…with noth­ing to har­vest, what’s the point?

Pieter Bruegel’s the Har­vesters gets the most rad­i­cal redo.

Cezanne’s Still Life with Bread and Eggs is now just Eggs…

…and Sal­vador Dali’s Eucharis­tic Still Life has been reduced to mere fish­es.

By con­trast, the pic­nick­ers in Édouard Manet’s Le Déje­uner Sur L’Herbe prob­a­bly don’t even notice the omis­sion.

See more, includ­ing work by Jean-François Mil­let, Vin­cent van Gogh, Car­avag­gio, Giuseppe Arcim­bol­do, and Jeff Koons in Coulet’s Gluten Free Muse­um.

A quick image search using the phrase “bread paint­ing” sug­gests that much work remains to be done.

via So Bad So Good

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philoso­pher Por­traits: Famous Philoso­phers Paint­ed in the Style of Influ­en­tial Artists

What Hap­pens When a Cheap Ikea Print Gets Pre­sent­ed as Fine Art in a Muse­um

Sal­vador Dalí’s Melt­ing Clocks Paint­ed on a Lat­te

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, is play­ing in New York City through Novem­ber 20. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday