SCAMPER for brainstorming ideas

Manet substitutes a goddess for a real woman who looks back—dragging the scene into modern life.

Titian shows a goddess of love in a rich Venetian bedroom — ideal beauty, mythic story. Manet keeps the reclining nude on a bed, but substitutes the goddess with a real Paris sex worker who looks straight at the viewer.

Why it works: The substitution moves the topic from myth to modern life. The viewer is no longer “safe” in a story about gods; the painting asks questions about society and the gaze.

Picasso substitutes fractured bodies and mask faces for the soft salon nude—same topic, totally different mood.

Ingres paints a smooth, long-backed nude in a fantasy “Eastern” style — calm, pretty, and controlled. Picasso substitutes that salon ideal with fractured bodies and mask-like faces influenced by African and Iberian sculpture.

Why it works: The substitution keeps the subject (the nude) but changes the mood from soft beauty to confrontation. The same genre, but comfort is replaced by tension and debate.

Arcimboldo combines still life and portrait—food builds a face, so one image carries two kinds of meaning.

A ruler’s head is built from fruit, vegetables, and plants. Still life (food) and portrait (a person) are combined into one face.

Why it works: Combining genres turns the sitter into an allegory — seasons, harvest, power. The meaning needs both “portrait” and “pile of food” in the same picture.

Dalí combines hard clocks with soft, melting forms—opposites turn time into dream logic.

A quiet landscape meets pocket watches that melt like soft cheese. Hard metal and clock faces combine with something soft, limp, and dreamlike.

Why it works: The combination suggests time is not rigid in the way clocks pretend. It is fluid, strange, and closer to dream logic than to a timetable.

Velázquez adapts a stiff royal portrait into a puzzle—who watches whom, and who holds power?

Velázquez starts from a royal group portrait, but adapts it: he adds himself painting, a mirror that may reflect the king and queen, and a doorway that makes room for the viewer. The usual “sit still and look noble” format becomes a puzzle about who sees whom.

Why it works: Adapting court portraiture turns the scene into a question about perception and power — not just a record of important people.

Wiley adapts the emperor-on-a-horse cliché—a contemporary Black sitter in streetwear claims the heroic spotlight.

Wiley adapts the grand European tradition of “hero on a horse” — the kind of image used for emperors and propaganda. He places a contemporary Black sitter in that pose, wearing everyday streetwear.

Why it works: The format is borrowed from old power portraits, but the people in the centre are changed. The same visual language now asks who gets to be heroic in art history.

Goya modifies scale and light—the victim looms huge and bright; the killers shrink into the dark.

Goya enlarges the central victim and floods him with light. The firing squad stays smaller, darker, and more anonymous.

Why it works: Modifying scale and light turns one man into a symbol for many innocent people. Our eyes lock on him before we read the soldiers.

Mueck shrinks scale until the body reads tiny—you look down on grief like a private secret, not a monument.

Mueck radically shrinks a hyperreal male corpse. The viewer stands above and looks down on private grief.

Why it works: Modifying scale reverses the usual “hero statue” size of the body in public space. Small size makes the loss feel intimate and uncomfortable at the same time.

Duchamp puts a urinal to a new use—gallery placement and a signature recast plumbing as sculpture and debate.

A urinal is made for a bathroom. Duchamp puts it in a gallery, signs it “R. Mutt,” and turns it into a sculpture.

Why it works: The purpose shifts from plumbing to a question: what counts as art if the artist only chooses and places the object?

Rauschenberg puts bedding to new use as a vertical canvas—sleeping gear becomes the painting itself.

A quilt and pillow are normally for sleeping. Rauschenberg puts them on the wall, splashes paint on them, and treats them like a painting surface.

Why it works: The bed becomes both support and subject. Private life enters the public language of painting.

Rodin strips pedestal, costume, and story—only a naked thinker on a rock remains.

Traditional heroic sculpture often includes a pedestal, costume, props, or a clear story. Rodin strips that away: a nude man alone on a rock, thinking.

Why it works: Elimination forces focus on the act of thinking itself, not on rank, battle, or identity.

Malevich strips subject, contrast, and depth—almost nothing remains but a white square and quiet feeling.

Malevich removes a clear subject, strong colour contrast, and illusion of depth. A white square on a slightly different white ground is almost all that remains.

Why it works: With so much removed, what is left is pure shape and feeling. Nothing else competes for attention.

Holbein reverses meaning with your viewpoint—the floor smear reads as a skull only from the side.

Two well-dressed men stand with globes and instruments. A strange shape stretches across the floor — it only becomes a skull when you move to the side and look from an angle.

Why it works: The reversal ties wealth and learning to death in one picture. Frontal viewing is not enough; you must move your body to see the full meaning.

Magritte pits image against caption—a pipe painting insists “not a pipe,” splitting words from picture.

A painting of a pipe with the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”). Normally we name what we see; Magritte breaks that habit.

Why it works: You are looking at paint on canvas, not a smokeable object. The image and the label are not the same thing, so language and picture are split.