The LOLvant-garde

Brainiac readers know that I've been tracking the LOL(Cat) meme, not particularly closely, for nearly a year now. (See links below.)

I thought the phenomenon had painted itself into a corner. Once you've translated the Bible into LOLspeak, that's it, right? But then I discovered a blog project titled "The LOLvant Garde."

Curated by Chaz, a Chicago-based museum employee and performance artist, The LOLvant Garde project applies LOLspeak to cutting-edge artworks with brilliant results.

Vito Acconci, for example, got his start in the early 1970s as a performance artist who used his own body as a canvas. He bit himself, for example; the resulting marks -- as well as the act of biting -- were his art. What might a cat make of Acconci's work? This:

And what cat could resist the human-animal bonding on display in Jeff Koons's ironic 1988 sculpture "Michael Jackson and Bubbles," a life-size gold-leaf-plated porcelain statue of Jacko and his pet chimpanzee (which sold at Sotheby's for $5.6 million)? No cat, is the answer:

PS: For those of you who've never seen a high-school yearbook, "BFF" means "Best Friends Forever."

The LOLvant Garde project hasn't been updated since May 13. I hope it hasn't run out of steam. Show those LOLCats of yours some more artworks, Chaz.

* September 2007: I blogged about the "PhiLOLsophers" project.

* October 2007: I produced an audio slideshow in which Boing Boing's Mark Frauenfelder explained LOLCats, among other things.

* November 2007: I blogged about the "LOLCat Wasteland."

* April 2008: I attended ROFLCon, in Cambridge, and attended a panel discussion featuring Martin Grondin of the LOLCat Bible Translation Project, Cheez of the LOLCat site I Can Has Cheezburger, Ryan and Arija of LOLSecretz, Stephen Granades of LOLTrek, and Adam Lindsay of LOLCode.