On the Popcultural Life of Historical Works of Art in Humorous Advertising

The paramount objective of this paper is to discuss the popcultural life of historical works of art in selected humorous ads. Firstly, the workings of the incongruity-resolution theory of humour and script opposition are presented. Then, the author proceeds to the topic of popculturing visual art in ads. Finally, attention is paid to specific instances of popculturing and funification in several art-related multimodal ads, which makes it possible to see the mechanisms of humour elicitation resultant from the ongoing displacement of historical works of art and their transference into the pop-cultural and advertising realms. To this end, the author gathered a collection of ads in English in which visual art is used in order to introduce humour.