The Gluten Free Museum, a tongue-in-cheek art blog poking fun at the latest dietary fad has emerged online, the BBC reports. It’s essential viewing for people whose gluten intolerance extends to their eyes.
The blog features seminal artworks from art history, sans bread. “It is a joke,” says Arthur Coulet, the 26-year-old French graphic designer behind the blog. He told the BBC that he was inspired by the image manipulations of the French Situationist movement to critique the celebrity-driven fads of contemporary society. (For more artnet content on hilarious appropriated historical art works see Fat Cats Posed In Botticelli, Klimt, and Other Classical Paintings Go Viral and Bored Office Workers Re-Create Art Masterpieces — It’s Hilarious).
However, Coulet revealed, “I have people in my entourage who can’t eat gluten for health reasons. I showed them the blog and they laughed.”
According to studies only 1 percent of the British population suffers from coeliac disease, commonly known as gluten intolerance. However, statistics show that sales of gluten-free products rose by 15 percent last year. The discrepancy has raised questions over the medical legitimacy of some people’s wheat-free diets.
Meanwhile in the US, the New Yorker reported that 20 million Americans claim eating wheat causes them distress. The New Yorker’s Michael Specter asks “How could gluten, present in staple food that has sustained humanity for thousands of years, have suddenly become so threatening?”
The Washington Post agreed. “Someone finally found the perfect way to make fun of the gluten-free movement,” their headline exclaimed.