What kind of society would we be without the meme? An exemplary product of a contemporaneity that has come to terms with the limited time available and the centrality of the image, memes are now a symbol, obvious to some, controversial to others, of a culture based on speed, reproducibility and widespread dissemination. Immediate, accessible and digital: the perfect language for the inhabitants of the twenty-first century.

  "A viral phenomenon that aims not simply to reproduce but to reinvent itself" - as Alessandro Lolli defines them in The War of the Memes (effequ, 2017) -, within reach of anyone with an idea to express and opposable thumbs, memes are a tool that spreads opinions and visions in the span of a click, creates communities, draws trends. Wrong to think it is always just a pastime, a joke or a joke, because the art of meming is actually something subtle, which often has to do with directness and essentiality.

With memes, in short, one does politics, gossip, information, criticism, entertainment. But most of all, perhaps, one makes culture. Sometimes, even at a high level. By increasingly shortening the distance between audience and author until it disappears, "users become the editors, critics, translators, and (co-)authors of poor images" (Hito Steyerl, In Defense of the Poor Image, e-flux journal, November 2009, issue #10).

And memes themselves are culture. In her book Memesthetics. The Eternal September of Art (Nero Editions, 2020), Valentina Tanni notes how youtubers and instagrammers are "bequeathing us a set of practices and aesthetics that call to mind the precepts of the historical avant-gardes, cheerfully distorted in a weird/strange/disturbing, wild and uninhibited key." We like Duchamp, then, we like those moustaches that desecrated the Mona Lisa, in a clean and concise red thread linking the revolutionary gesture of 1919 to our acts of ordinary disobedience on the web.

The entanglements between memes and art are thus more deeply rooted than one might imagine at first glance, and more importantly, they go in both directions. Here are five Instagram pages to follow to remind yourself that, even for those who love art, the Internet is a wonderful place.

She describes herself as "an innocent nun cruising around on a pleasant cruise" the owner of the nearly 52,000-follower account that spreads and profanes medieval art. We are familiar with all those slender, ungainly bodies that crowd the gables of Gothic churches and inhabit the pages of ancient manuscripts. In the hands of our "nun" they become perfect meme bases, in which that sacred ugliness blends with contemporary trends, between "what's in my bag?" and horoscopes. The author often addresses "girlies," her favorite listeners who, in medieval times, would certainly have been burned at the stake.

Behiding behind the sarcasm of the 53,000-follower account is Beatrice Levine, an art historian specializing in Holocaust and Genocide Studies (University of Kansas) and Nazi-era Provenance Research (University of Denver). Interweaving pop culture, feminism, and critique of capitalism, Levine has started a social project since 2015 that critiques and mocks the pompous seriousness of the contemporary art system to the tune of memes featuring Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga, and Britney Spears. Accompanied by a cynicism that only those who have worked in the American museum and auction industry can accrue, Levine downplays the ego of an exclusionary, elitist, and undemocratic system every day. 

Graphic quality, incredible storytelling, and perfect dialog: Matthijs Van Mierlo is the Belgian creator who tells his 518,000 followers about works of art by letting the characters who inhabit them speak. So Caravaggio's Emmaus Supper turns into a discussion about who should fetch the wine, and Raphael's School of Athens becomes a "Reinassance boys club" in which the only woman, Hypatia of Alexandria, is "the Beyonce of philosophy."

The profile image is a self-portrait of Louis-Leopold Boilly, a 19th-century French artist "who loved to paint funny faces": an invitation, on Van Mierlo's part, to forget for a moment the academic rigidity still very often imposed on those who approach art history.

With her 30,000-follower account, Nicole Tersigni transforms paintings of the past into scenes of ordinary mansplaining. Random and often unfamiliar works serve as a meme base to tell about men explaining things to women: from the origin of feelings to the functions of the female body. Thus the protagonists of the paintings, either in their fine nineteenth-century clothes or completely nude, depending on the preferences of the male artist who portrayed them, roll their eyes or stare despairingly into space as they are told to smile more.

With a humor that Americans would call "sassy," Tersigni talks about politics, society, and current events through the universal language of (bitter) laughter. 

Nasty and funny memes about Italian art: the 25,000-follower account comments on everything from gossip to politics, from Sanremo to Temptation Island, but does so through Piero della Francesca, Paolo Uccello and Filippo Lippi. "I'm afraid more people have read Vasari than have gone to vote," one read shortly after the June 8 and 9 Citizenship Referendum, while these days Caravaggio's Medusa in the foreground accompanies the words "Cracking Eyes" in honor of the latest gossip about Raoul Bova.

Punctual and never trivial, Mo[n]stre's memes are made for those who spent their college years studying on Briganti-Giuliani, Argan and De Vecchi-Cerchiari manuals, for those who now do something else entirely different in life but who do not forget the time spent trying to distinguish a Mantegna from a Bellini.