What’s in that image? Masterpieces like you’ve never seen them before

During the past few months, I’ve become increasingly interested in digital art. Glitch, visualizations, pixels … it’s all very exciting, and I’ve wanted to dive in myself. As I progressed, I found myself tweaking the level of abstraction so much that I wrote code to do it in the browser.

Below are highly abstracted famous works of art. Each click will bring you closer and closer to the original. At some point, “Voila!” The experience is a bit like putting on glasses for the first time and suddenly realizing that you hadn’t been able before to see the leaves on the trees.

(TIP: Patience!  The individual frames and process of discovery are the best part. That said, how many clicks does it take for you to guess the final image? Answers are below, along with more detail on each artwork.)

Here are the answers:
1. “Starry Night,” Vincent van Gogh
2. “David,’ by Michelangelo
3.”The Great Wave Off Kanagawa,” by Hokusai
4. “The Creation of Adam (detail),” by Michelangelo
5.  ”Girl with a Pearl Earring,” by Johannes Vermeer

Do you have an idea for an artwork that would be terrific with this abstract treatment? Let us know in the comments section below.  Follow Duncan Graham on Twitter

A longer version of this post originally appeared on dvncan.com

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