From Venus de Milo to Nike ads: the role of art references in the production of COVID-19 humour in Central and Eastern Europe

This study examines the role of art references in the production of humour in COVID-19 Internet memes in Central and Eastern Europe. Taking a broad understanding of art (including fine art and popular culture references), we examine how humorous references to local, regional, glocal, and global art bring together and negotiate between different contexts: the verbal and the visual; the political and the cultural; the ‘old’ (pre-pandemic) and the ‘new normal’; the lasting (art) and the transient (the pandemic). A qualitative analysis of 189 humorous items circulated online in Belarus, Poland, and Romania during the first wave of the pandemic (March–June 2020) revealed the variety of humour-making mechanisms re-using art references. Our findings show that the local, regional, glocal, and global categories entail different forms of recognition on the part of the implied reader, with global references standing out as parodic in a non-confrontational and playful sense, while the local, regional, or glocal references aimed at ‘stylistic confrontation’ with the crisis. We argue that art references localize and domesticate the pandemic, constructing a shared frame of interpretation of ‘local’ life in the time of the global COVID-19 crisis, thus creating a setting for humour.