AMERICAN ICONS

“SKINNY ELVIS, FAT LINES” depicts the days before the rhinestone studded suits and drug binges. Elvis Presley was called “Elvis the Pelvis” and in the days of black & white TV, he was not allowed to be shown below the waist.

SKINNY ELVIS, FAT LINES by Bob Kessel

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GOING FOR BAROQUE

Presenting a new art series by Bob Kessel based on paintings from the Baroque era. Baroque is the art movement of the Counter- Reformation in the 17th century. Although some features appear in Dutch art, the Baroque style was limited mainly to Catholic countries. A relevant part of works was made on religious themes, since the Church was the main customer.

The word BAROQUE derives probably from the ancient Portuguese noun “barroco” which is a pearl that is not round but of unpredictable and elaborate shape.
Hence, in informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is “elaborate”, with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
In modern usage, the term Baroque may still be used, usually pejoratively, to describe works of art, craft, or design that are thought to have excessive ornamentation or complexity.

PRODIGAL SON by Bob Kessel after Rembrandt

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FUJI TWICE

Bob Kessel has a new art series “FUJI TWICE”. Mount Fuji has been reduced to just one diagonal line. Talk about reduction!

If you don’t climb Mt Fuji once in your life, you are a fool.
If you climb it twice, you are a fool.

- Old Japanese Proverb

Print by Bob Kessel from the art series “FUJI TWICE”

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PULP

The name “pulp” comes from the cheap wood pulp paper on which such magazines were printed. Magazines printed on better paper and usually offering family-oriented content were often called “glossies” or “slicks”. Pulps were the successor to the “penny dreadfuls”, “dime novels”, and short fiction magazines of the nineteenth century. Although many respected writers wrote for pulps, the magazines are perhaps best remembered for their lurid and exploitative stories, and for their similarly sensational cover art.

GUNSEL by Bob Kessel

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ROMANTICISM

Bob Kessel has a new art series “ROMANTICISM”. Romanticism, first defined as an aesthetic in literary criticism around 1800, gained momentum as an artistic movement in France and Britain in the early decades of the 19th century and flourished until mid-century. With its emphasis on the imagination and emotion, Romanticism emerged as a response to the disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789.

FISHERMAN AND SIREN by Bob Kessel after Frederic Lord Leighton

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SHUNGA

Shunga are literally “images of spring.” That is the time of recreation and procreation, the time that inspires man and woman to couple, as if anyone needed an excuse. Shunga appeared prominently in the works of Hokusai, Utamaro, and many other revered woodcut artists.

In the Japan of the 1800’s, the color woodcut print was the most popular artform of the day. The artists of the so-called floating world or ukiyo-e portrayed real life personages and situations as the subject matter for their wood block prints. Ukiyo-e artists created extraordinary portraits of Kabuki Actors, Geisha, Sumo Wrestlers, and other notables, as well as landscapes and architectural views of old Japan. The incredible artistic output of these highly skilled artists left us an accurate view of life in the Japan of yesteryear. There was however another aspect to the art of the ukiyo-e that few Westerners have heard of, that is the art of shunga, or… the Images of Spring.

SHUNGA RED KIMONO by Bob Kessel
from SHUNGA art series

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Email:  b.kessel@snet.net • Phone: (860)334-9438