Avatars, Doppelgangers, and Lookalikes

How They Met Themselves
(1864), Rossetti

One of the few paintings that uses doppelgangers is How They Met Themselves (1864) by English poet and painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. There is some argument over which couple is the unreal pair, although I am guessing the couple on the left because of the glow surrounding them. The fact that the girl on the right is swooning indicates her shock and surprise at seeing their duplicates. However, the other opinion would argue that she is a zombie like that of Boris Karloff's monster. The couple on the right also seem paler by comparison.

Girl with a Pearl Earring
(1665), Johannes Vermeer

Clearly, there has been some spot-on casting of doppelgangers in the movies. For example, the 2003 movie starring Scarlett Johansson as Griet in the Girl with a Pearl Earring. I'm pretty sure that Johannes Vermeer is NOT Colin Firth's double!

She has also been included in several of my other blog posts: Mona Lisa, French & Italian Art Museums, and Masks and other Face Coverings Throughout History, art, TV, and Movies.

Lust for Life (1956)

Kirk Douglas made a perfect Vincent Van Gogh in the 1956 movie Lust for Life. My March 2020 post, Artist Portrayals in Movies – Twelve of My Favorite Biopics also included Andy Garcia as Amedeo Modigliani.

Johnny Depp as
Edward Ratchett

Portrait of Jean Alexandre
(1909), Amedeo Modigliani

Speaking of Modigliani, his 1909 Portrait of Jean Alexandre looks a bit like the victim Edward Ratchett played by actor Johnny Depp in 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express.

The Arnolfini Portrait (1434),
Jan van Eyck

Seen in my August 2020 post, Thing that go Together in Art…, the man resembles Vladimir Putin. I almost didn’t include this likeness for obvious reasons, though there are several others I purposely excluded. Feel free to look them up in the article, Famous People and Their Doppelgängers in Art. on the Daily Art Magazine website.

Schulman

Frazier

Turning to baseball players, and specifically the Seattle Mariners, here are two players with somewhat famous doppelgangers. Recently, I caught an episode of a reality show called Catfish TV with host, Nev Schulman. I thought he looked remarkably like Mariners second baseman, Adam Frazier.

Raphael Self-Portrait

Then, I was looking at my post, entitled 10 Artist with April Birthdays, and found that Raphael’s Self-Portrait resembled Mariners Starting Pitcher, Logan Gilbert. Usually Logan is photographed smiling, so it was hard to find a more pensive Gilbert.

Kal Korff

My own doppelgangers were pointed out to me when I was still working. One of my software development colleagues found a much younger picture of Kal Korff, author of Area 51 books, and posted copies all over our office. Fortunately, it was much more flattering than the photo I found and included here.

Terry Fator

Then, I was in line at an espresso stand on my way to work and someone in front of me told the barista that I looked like 2007 AGT winning ventriloquist Terry Fator. I probably should have kept that one to myself because it stuck for many years. At least it replaced the other one!

Costumed Fridas (2017) care of DMA

Check out this article, Over 1,000 Frida Kahlo Lookalikes Gather in Dallas in a Quest for a New Guinness World Record, on Art Net / Art World about the July 2017 celebration of Frida Kahlo's 110th birthday at the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA). The site also photographs everyday people posing in front of their own doppelgangers captured in museum portraits. I chose this photo because Frida often painted her self-portraits as twins.

With today's popularity of video games and the world of social media it seems that many of us are creating our own avatars to represent us. For a while I had a Bitmoji of myself, then I replaced it with another version that I am using with Facebook Messenger.