Ringo Starr is a name recognized by millions as a member of the most influential and famous bands of all time. He rose to fame as the drummer for the Beatles and that is how most people know him. However, since the disbanding of the Beatles in 1970, Ringo has picked up some new hobbies. Now you may be thinking of his fairly successful solo career which featured platinum record “Ringo” and a couple top 100 Billboard hits. However, starting in 2005 Ringo started his own visual art career that has become very popular among a small group of fans, but not for the reasons you may think.
It is not uncommon for popular musicians to branch out into other mediums, but Starr’s artwork stands out. Namely, all of his pieces are made on Microsoft Paint and are…unconventional, to say the least. They tend to depict faces that are Picasso-esque in their lack of realism. Ringo works with bright and bold colors that definitely grab your attention. He also names his pieces things such as “Hat Man”, “Yer Baby”, “Big H, Two Small Heads”, etc. Starr did begin his art career in the late 90’s using acrylics and oils, but by 2005 had fully made the switch to the digital medium. On the website for his artwork Starr writes, “I started in the late nineties with my computer art. While I was touring it gave me something to do in all those crazy hotels you have to stay in on the road. In its way ‘Pop’ art is always changing-like ‘Pop’ artists. It’s a natural move of things like pop music and even Popeye the Sailor Man.”
However, the most interesting aspect about Ringo’s art career is that it is not known to mainstream audiences. In fact even when you search for “Ringo Starr” on Google, his art page is the very last site listed on the first page of results. Yet his paintings sell for thousands of dollars. Now, it can be argued that the biggest reason for this is because you are paying for the Ringo Starr name. However, something strange has happened with Starr’s artwork.
By this, I of course mean the cult popularity of his artwork that has emerged on websites such as Tumblr. Meaning, Ringo Starr’s art has amassed popularity among young people as a meme. Internet users joke about Starr’s artwork being “objectively terrible” yet somehow bringing in thousands of dollars per piece. What is it about Ringo Starr’s artwork that interests internet youth and leads it to become a meme?
In order to answer this question we need to look into internet humour and what makes “memes” funny to the Gen Z audience. Although modern memes fall into a myriad of categories, Starr’s artwork would likely be referred to as a “sh*t-post” type meme. These memes are characterized by their seeming randomness and lack of context. Urban Dictionary goes as far as to say, “a sh*tpost can become a meme, but a meme cannot become a sh*tpost”. In other words, the humor of such content is it’s total randomness. Starr’s artwork lends itself perfectly to this type of humour seeing it is unexpected from a musical artist known for being one of the greats. The artwork itself depicts images that seem so random and thoughtless that the confusion turns into comedy lending itself perfectly to sh*tpost culture.
However, in the world of fine art, artwork that seems to also run by the same definitions of lack of context and randomness is known as surrealism. Although Starr self-defines his work as Pop-Art and it certainly fits that style slightly more, there are aspects of it that meet the Surrealism definition. Surrealist art was known for purposefully defying artistic norms and reason, leading to the same seemingly random and contextless pieces. Surrealists such as Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Andre Masson and Pop-Artists such as Warhol, Liechtenstein, and Haring are thought of as highly esteemed creators. So this begs the question: if he is creating art that falls between these categories of Surrealism and Pop Art, why is Ringo Starr not getting these same praises?
The answer to this question is simple: the internet is to blame. Ringo Starr’s artwork uses Microsoft Paint as a medium. Microsoft Paint is known for producing grainy and blocky images that hold very little aesthetic value. Microsoft paint is known to Gen Z internet users as something they played with on old computers when they were bored. Even Gen Z artists who use internet programs to create their art know better than to think MS Paint is useful for anything other than meme content. MS Paint memes are commonplace because the quality is generally sub par. Therefore, for an artist such as Ringo Starr known for creating some of the most famous music in the world to come out with such low quality artwork creates a juxtaposition. It is within that juxtaposition that the comedy lies.
The art of Ringo Starr has become a debate, for it walks a fine line between Surrealist pop art and sh*tpost. Yet, internet culture seems to have cast it deep in the sh*tpost category. What do you think?
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