
Call for Entries: #Character Kitsch
Pictoplasma invited you to study the old masters – and enhance them by adding character – as eccentrically camp, garishly gratuitous and romantically kitschy as possible.
Everyone seems to be going on about the “good old times”. But were they really better? And for whom? For Characters?
No matter how sentimental the past may be perceived - we think there’s always room for improvement!
And you made us proud.
Your mission was:
. Scrape the world’s museums – and steal (right-click, save as) your favorite classical painting.
. Study the craftsmanship, feel inspired, and deep dream your own characters into the scenery, by lovingly superposing/arranging them over the landscape.
. Use whatever (human) tools and techniques you wish.
. Change history to the better – by adding the character it lacks!
. The deadline was Monday, July 14, 2025 at midnight.
UPDATE:
The results are in!
Our esteemed jury of acclaimed high-art critics (all of wich expressively wished to remain anonymous) has selected 5 masterpieces – to receive a full, free year of PictoPRO powers, unlocking 24/7 VoD access to our growing archives of 300+ past, present and future PictoTalks and enabling them to learn from (and scrape) the OG masters of international character design and art.

Plazma Clay X Canaletto - Veduta del Canal Grande, 1730
The jury’s statement:
Emerging from the misty ether of Canaletto’s serenely rational Grand Canal, a titanic clay beast—both sculptural absurdity and sublime figment—rises like a half-remembered childhood nightmare let loose upon Enlightenment order. Its ludicrous grandeur ruptures the perspective of the veduta with euphoric defiance, turning Venice into a theater of the postmodern mythic: ridiculous, reverent, and utterly irresistible.

Gabby Cherney x Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry - The Pearl and the Wave, 1862
The jury’s statement:
Ah, the Baudry nude—once an emblem of academic sensuality—now anarchically reclaimed by a jubilant infestation of infantile pink homunculi, each cavorting across the sanctified flesh like postmodern cherubim on a sugar high. It is both a blasphemous ballet and a euphoric deconstruction: rococo opulence deflated into comic liberation, where eros, absurdity, and cake achieve a rare and delightful equilibrium.

Matt Johns x William Michael Harnett - Still Life, 1888
The jury’s statement:
In a most audacious act of postmodern pastiche, this composition stages a farcical intervention upon the sanctity of the classical still life—wherein a saccharine digital interloper, rendered in faux-naïf style, dares to ignite a cigarette amid the sober chiaroscuro of Harnett's 19th-century sobriety. The juxtaposition is at once galling and perversely brilliant: a meditation on the fragility of legacy in the post-digital age of emoji.

https://home.pictoplasma.com/artist/elena_
Elena x Otto Dix – Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia Harden, 1926
The jury’s statement:
In this disquieting and darkly whimsical portrait, the artist juxtaposes Otto Dix' grotesque elegance with absurd surrealism—rendering a figure whose angular posture, vacant gaze, and anachronistic accessories even more evoke the decadence and decay of postwar ennui. The cigarette transformed into a blue fish introduces a jarring note of surreal comedy, unsettling the viewer with its playful subversion of vice and reality.

Niconoclaste x Jeff Koons, Balloon Dog (Blue), 1994 - 2000
The jury’s statement:
Yet another Koons balloon dog—because nothing screams intellectual provocation like rehashing the world’s most literal metaphor for inflated ego. And yet… this sublime skeletal danse macabre of kitsch and canon pierces the veil of irony and ascends. It is a resurrection, an object that winks even as it whispers eternity. The grotesque and the jubilant tango here with such improbable grace, one can only surrender—to laughter, to awe, to the sheer, effervescent yes of it all.
Congratulations!
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