World Emoji Day celebrates ‘fine arts’ with cheeky take on ‘Las Meninas’

World Emoji Day is on July 17 every year since 2014, when Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge introduced it as a day when emojis are celebrated. Now, this day is also for emoji-related news and release announcements. 

The official Twitter page of World Emoji Day kicked off celebrations with a tip of the hat – albeit cheekily – to ‘Las Meninas’. 

The emoji-filled take on Diego Velázquez’s painting is captioned “Some fine arts”. The 1656 painting by the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age forces viewers to ask questions about the painting’s perspective since the characters seem to be looking at the viewer, rather than the painter who’s painting them. 

This raises questions and creates an uncertain relationship between the viewers and the figures in the painting. 

The image above shows how ‘Las Meninas’ looks, so the emoji version of Velazquez’s work becomes more readily evident. All the faces, except for the girl in the far right of the frame, have been replaced by emojis. The dog’s face is replaced by the dog emoji as well, and the painting behind has a ghost emoji peeping through. The bigger paintings on the wall, in the meanwhile, have been replaced by emojis of the Statue of Liberty and a mountaintop. 

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Velazquez’s painting went on to influence great Impressionist Pablo Picasso, who drew multiple interpretations of and multiple figures from the original. 

Unlike the master’s interpretation of Velazquez’s work, the emoji version of it keeps things light. The person addressing the individual with the queen’s face as the emoji is holding a mobile phone in their hand. 

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If one tries to search for meanings, as they do in ‘Las Meninas’, then the mobile would most likely be a reference to the origin of emojis – and the popularity they gained after Unicode’s standardized usage.