You’ve seen TikTok users say that they “look like” famous people. You have seen them change into Marvel heroes. You’ve seen them use a filter to decide if they’re “hot or not,” which, to be honest, doesn’t seem like a good idea.
Now, though, TikTokers are using a chart of averaged faces from art history to find out which of 18 historical art styles their faces look like. Which ones? Academism, Mannerism, Primitivism, Art Nouveau, Neoclassicism, Renaissance, Baroque, Northern Renaissance, Romanticism, Impressionism, Pop Art, Symbolism, Magic Realism, Post-Impressionism, or Ukiyo-e.
The Art History Chart on Tiktok Features 36 Averaged Faces
Aleksey Tikhonov, a data analyst, made the chart. Aleksey wrote that he started by picking out about 18,500 portraits from the dataset of paintings called Painter by Numbers. In a post on 2020 Medium, he talked about how the averaged images were made.
“But when I tried to make average faces in an artistic style without cleaning up the data, I ended up with strange, sexless faces,” he said. “Because of this, I had to divide these portraits into groups, portraits of men, portraits of women, portraits of children, and others. “The “other” portraits were ones where I couldn’t tell what gender the person was, like some Cubist paintings.”
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Aleksey then used John W. Miller’s Facer library’s face detection, alignment, and averaging technology, focusing on paintings from the 24 styles with enough portraits to use as points of reference.
In addition to the collage of averaged faces, Aleksey also made a time-lapse video of portraits from 1500 to 2000, taken every 10 years. On his Society6 page, he sells prints of pictures that are an average of each style.
What is the ‘art History Faces Chart’ Challenge?
The “Art History Faces Chart” Challenge has been over TikTok for the past few days.
A grid of 18 faces from different times in art history is used for this trend. Art nouveau, surrealism and pop art are just a few of them.
To do the challenge, you must use a specific filter on TikTok to find out which face from art history you look like.
You Don’t Need an Art History Degree to Know the Differences Between These Styles
Don’t worry if you don’t know what these styles are, like if you don’t see the difference between Nouveau and Neoclassicism. An article on Artland talks about many of the art movements shown on the chart. Artland says the Baroque training “emphasizes dramatic, exaggerated motion and clear, easily understood detail” to create drama, tension, joy, and grandeur.
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Impressionist artists, on the other hand, “tried to accurately and objectively record visual “impressions” by using small, thin, visible brushstrokes that come together to form a single scene and emphasize movement and the changing qualities of light,” according to the site.
And Post-Impressionists “developed a personal, unique style, but they were all interested in showing how the world made them feel emotionally and psychologically through bold colors and expressive, often symbolic images.”
Face-averaging technology creates fuzzy, vignette-like images that blur the details, so you’d have to look at individual works from each movement or, better yet, go to an art museum to see, for example, how brushstrokes differ between styles.
Redditors Have Scrutinized the Chart
Even if some of the details are averaged, Aleksey’s chart of faces has made a big splash on Reddit, where users have pointed out trends beyond the art movement.
“Does it seem like more portraits of women are tilted slightly to the left, like a profile, while most portraits of men are straight on?” one replied.
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Someone else said, “They all look like the Mona Lisa. People might like her face because it seems like a mix of everyone. Da Vinci did things before his time.
How to Do the ‘art History Faces Chart’ Trend
- First, go to Google Images and type “art history faces chart” into the search bar. Find the chart everyone uses on TikTok (it should be the first photo) and save it to your camera roll.
- Next, open TikTok and search “art history faces chart” on the “Discover” tab to find someone else who has done the trend.
- If you click on their video, it will tell you above their username which filters they used: “shifting” and “green screen.” Put these in your saved filters so you can use them efficiently.
- Now, start making your TikTok video. Use the “green screen” effect to put the image of the faces chart you saved to your camera roll earlier on the screen.
- Now, use the “shifting” filter to see what period in art history your face resembles.
- Also, don’t forget to add the right music. The name of the sound is “Arabesque – Debussy.”
Tiktok is Obsessed With Art History
- TikTok is full of art historical trends, and the faces chart is just one of them.
- Art history videos are a whole genre on TikTok, just like dog videos, dance challenges, and food hacks.
- To learn more about art history, go to the “Discover” tab and search “art history.”
- Then, you’ll see a bunch of different videos about art history.
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