Art 101: How to Dress Like 15 Famous Artists for Halloween

With Halloween just around the corner, it's time to start getting your costume together. If you're out of ideas but want to impress your friends with your cultural literacy and clever wit, luckily the art world is full of great characters to impersonate. Cecilia Gimenez's botched Ecce Homo Renaissance restoration (aka "Beast Jesus") may be leading the way as the costume of the season, but we here at Artspace have compiled a list of 15 other artist and art-world-figure costume ideas, with easy, step-by-step instructions for how to make them.

Marina Abramovic
1. Buy a witch costume
2. Remove the hat
3. Intone, "I am Marina Abramovic"

David Hockney
1. Put on rounded glasses in a bold, unexpected color
2. Put on a pair of pants in another bold, unexpected color 
3. Put on a jacket in another bold, unexpected color
4. Have it all work beautifully, somehow

MoMA Director Glenn Lowry
1. Put on a black Nehru jacket
2. Put on black pants
3. Project unimaginable power

Hermann Nitsch
1. Remove clothes
2. Jump in a pile of sheep intestines
3. Do not shower

Frida Kahlo
1. Stop plucking your unibrow
2. Put a few of your organs on the outside of your body
3. Get in a fight with your boyfriend

Vincent van Gogh
1. Dye your hair and beard tangerine
2. Act off-puttingly intense
3. Profess your love to the wrong people
4. Ominously play with a straight razor

Pablo Picasso
1. Shave your head
2. Wear a striped shirt
3. Doodle on everything constantly, shouting, "I'm Picasso!"

Marcel Duchamp
1. Buy a readymade costume
2. Tell people you're a chess player
3. Confuse everybody

James Franco
1. Dress like James Dean
2. Confuse everybody

Larry Gagosian
1. Have the helmet hair of an aging astronaut
2. Wear a blue suit
3. Sign everyone at the party dressed as a famous artist

Damien Hirst
1. Bisect your favorite stuffed animal
2. Scatter dots and diamonds wherever you go
3. Mug clownishly in photographs

Ai Weiwei
1. Grow a long wispy beard
2. Dress in black
3. Put a pillow under your shirt
4. Have the Chinese police track your every move

Pussy Riot
1. Wear a brightly colored balaclava
2. Play air guitar
3. Go to jail

Yayoi Kusama
1. Cut your hair like Anna Wintour
2. Dye it the color of van Gogh's beard
3. Wear Marc Jacobs 2012 Fall collection

Cindy Sherman
1. Dress as anybody but Cindy Sherman