Pepper Spray Cop Meme Walks Through Art History

The pepper-spray cop from UC Davis, or Lt. John Pike, has become a meme, but not just any meme but one that is walking through art works of every stripe if only to prove how ridiculous and absurd his actions were in the face of non-violent resistance.

Unlike, the iconic image we posted about on Friday, this image’s cocktail of absurd authoritarianism has resonated with the interwebz and its love of pointing out hypocrisy. If the Picasso up top is more historically “correct” and connected to a moment of political resistance, the Seurat riff is more powerful in that it points out how lackadaisical the officer is going about his business — he strangely fits in the Sunday scene.

Late last night on Hyperallergic LABS, we posted some of the earliest images from the meme and asked our readers to help us find the source of the images, but we haven’t had any luck even after dozens of leads and countless emails to potential meme originators.

What we did discover is how popular this meme is when our post, in only 12 hours received over 2,200 notes (not to mention 195 Facebook likes, 50 tweets and 6 G+s).

One of our Facebook fans, Michael Mayer, chimed in and pointed out a well-done version he created himself using Eugene Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” (1830) [posted below].

Another Facebook  fan, Richie Budd, added his thoughts via a comment about the “origins” of the meme. His remark is true about the brilliance of memes in general:

We all did. Give us all our 15 minutes.

Maura Jaukis, over at the Washington Post‘s ArtsPost blog, has a few others that demonstrate how widespread this meme has become in only a matter of days.

There is a whole tumblelog (of course) devoted to the meme, enjoy.

And if you know the origin of the meme please drop us a line and let us know here.

UPDATED: Know Your Meme has a whole gallery of pepper-spray cop riffs.