The Persistence of Fools and Horses, Salvador Delboy

I’D miss Twitter. The social media platform for the Doctor Who-obsessed, opinionated cat-lover has enriched my life in so many ways. It was Twitter that taught me how to remove persistent calcified stains from the toilet bowl, and it was Twitter that informed me Boris Johnson had resigned.

More fragrantly, it was Twitter that alerted me to the work of graphic artist Chris Barker, in particular his inventive, funny and brilliantly executed famous artworks/light entertainment mash-ups entitled Brush Strokes.

And I’m not alone; Chris has picked up plenty of celebrity endorsements on the way – Caitlin Moran, Ade Edmondson and Dara O’Briain are among those who’ve lavished praise on his works of wit. Works that have seen him replace the American Gothic couple with the Meldrews, imagine Olive from On The Buses as the Mona Lisa and include matchstick Likely Lads mooching through a Lowry landscape.

Two Soups, Jack Vettriano

In all, he’s created 100 works and not only can you see 13 exhibited at the Museum of Comedy in Bloomsbury, you can bid for one at a live auction at the closing party on March 16.

“They are pretty exclusive, they are framed really nicely,” Chris says, “and they are the only prints of this series that I have signed and I have no intention of signing any more.”

A self-confessed Photoshop obsessive, the idea for the works was triggered by a fancy dress birthday party and encouragement from Chris’s wife.

“The fancy dress theme was ‘the golden age of light entertainment (no Yew Tree)’ because my wife and I had some funny ideas for costumes. I went as Noel Edmonds and she really wanted to go as Mollie Sugden. There were loads of great costumes, from Hi-De-Hi to ’Allo ’Allo and Acorn Antiques. We even had a full Rentaghost pantomime horse turn up! Anyway, my wife suggested I did some art for the walls and she doesn’t often suggest I open Photoshop so I took it and ran with it.

Bod Composition 1, Wassilly Kandinsky

“Bod as Kandinsky was the first. She liked it, so I carried on. Then obviously – because I am incapable of undersharing – I put them on social media and it went a bit nuts.”

Indeed, he was soon offered a book deal and a subsequent calendar also sold well. “And then the Museum of Comedy got in touch about exhibiting some prints at their venue.”
His admirers, he assumes, are likely to be of a “certain age”, a fact he’s happy about.

“I’d be very surprised if anyone under the age of about 35 knows what any of it is about, to be honest. But I quite like that – I explained the whole concept to my son, who is 11, and he sat and thought for a bit and said, ‘So it’s like if Picasso did Peppa Pig?’ and I was like: yes, he gets it!”

Chris’s criteria for inclusion were simple: one picture per artist and one picture per show (mainly).

Sorry! David Hockney

“I just wanted to do either things that I personally loved, or things that were so cheesy they were engraved on our memories. I wouldn’t do Jim Davidson or anyone like that though. I have standards.

“In terms of what artists I included, at first I imagined there were like 20 artists everyone would recognise so I would just do them – your Hockneys, your Warhols, your Magrittes – but as I went on I realised there were actually loads.”

He adds: “I had a list of shows I wanted to do and I would choose an artist and look through their work until something inspired me – oh, that looks a bit like so-and-so or whatever – and then think of a way to make it work and a way to make it funny.”

The pictures are all done in Photoshop but Chris redraws quite a lot of them himself.

“I’m such a control freak I sometimes find myself spotting things that aren’t quite right in the original paintings and correcting them!”

Stupid Boy, Andy Warhol

His favourite, he says, was his first – Bod – but he’s also fond of the Open All Hours Edward Hopper because it took ages. “The Two Soups was far and away the most popular online so that sticks out in my memory – and it’s a Victoria Wood sketch and she was great. It’s really hard to narrow down a favourite because I focused so much on all of them as I was doing them. I didn’t want to just bash any of them out. I wanted to do justice to the artists.”

He thinks they’ve proved to be popular because they “tickle the edge of people’s memories” and are harmless fun.

“So much of what I’ve done in the past has been dark, political, edgy, angry. Although they’re quite irreverent and in places borderline bad taste, it’s quite nice to do something that’s just inherently funny and silly with no underlying message.

“And people want that shit on their walls. They don’t want a big print in the living room of Rishi Sunak bleeding the country dry or Donald Trump with an arse for a face. They want to be reminded of fun stuff. And to combine it with art makes them feel intellectual as well!”

• The Museum of Comedy is at The Undercroft, St George’s Church, Bloomsbury Way, WC1A 2SR. For more information go to https://www.museumofcomedy.com/whats-on/chris-barker/