MoCCA (the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art) 594 Broadway, Suite 401 (btwn. Houston and Prince) New York, NY 10012, presents an exhibition of artworks by Bob Kessel. The show on May 17, 2012 at 6 pm is titled “ARTWORKS ASSEMBLE!” and features art inspired by comicbook super-heroes like Thor, Ironman, Captain America, Hulk, Batman, Superman, Spiderman and many more.

The show primarily consists of prints on paper roughly 3 by 3 feet square, or should I say in many cases, diamond shaped. The art, much like comicbooks, is made out of black lines, in this case, straight lines, some razor thin, some massively thick, surrounding primary colors of red, blue and yellow. To describe Bob Kessel’s art in simple terms, his work is… simple.

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace;
making the complicated simple,
awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”

- CHARLES MINGUS

This remark provides a clue to an aspect of Bob Kessel’s work that his apparent iconoclasm and irreverence have tended to conceal. He has remained in an important way a classical artist. Along with the images of superheroes there is an abiding commitment to composition. The language of form is what guides him to what lies behind his trivialized subjects, whether they come from pop culture or the history of art. Like all great artists, he uses  what is around him for inspiration, commentary, and, in Kessel’s case, a healthy amount of deconstructionist verve and wit. Like a jazz player, he takes a familiar tune and then uses that as a takeoff point to do his own original riffs on the theme.

Bob Kessel, born and raised in New York City, says about the show, “Historically, artists have always painted mythological figures, Hercules, Venus, Apollo. Superheroes represent the new modern myths, so it stands to reason that they should be the subject of our modern art.”

Those familiar with Bob Kessel’s artwork know that he works in series. Many are based on his extensive knowledge of art history with takeoffs on Picasso’s Minotaurs, Matisse’s Odalisques, or Cezanne’s Bathers. He mixes together different art styles to produce unexpected hybrids. Like Japanese Kaiju (monsters) with Italian Futurism, or Hello Kitty with Edvard Munch.

Now Bob Kessel has created a new art series where he turns his Fine Art sensibilities on the world of Comics. He describes this show as, “The Comicbook World meets the Fine Art World.” Neither one will be the same again.

HANGIN’ AROUND by Bob Kessel

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WINGHEAD by Bob Kessel

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MJOLNIR by Bob Kessel

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IRONMEN by Bob Kessel

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MEAN AND GREEN by Bob Kessel

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DARKNIGHT by Bob Kessel

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SUPERNACULAR by Bob Kessel

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born on 6, March 1475, commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.

Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime, and ever since then he has been held to be one of the greatest artists of all time. His output in every field during his long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. Two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, were sculpted before he turned thirty. Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential works in fresco in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. As an architect, Michelangelo pioneered the Mannerist style at the Laurentian Library. At 74 he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter’s Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan, the western end being finished to Michelangelo’s design, the dome being completed after his death on 18, February 1564.

MICHELANGELO PIETA by Bob Kessel

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TORSO by Bob Kessel

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MICHELANGELO IGNUDI by Bob Kessel

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MICHELANGELO IGNUDI BACK by Bob Kessel

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MICHELANGELO DELPHIC by Bob Kessel

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MICHELANGELO SNAKE by Bob Kessel

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MICHELANGELO WRESTLERS by Bob Kessel

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]]> http://www.bobkessel.com/2012/03/01/michelangelo-di-lodovico-buonarroti-simoni-by-bob-kessel/feed/ 0 http://www.bobkessel.com/2012/02/24/auguste-renoir-by-bob-kessel/ http://www.bobkessel.com/2012/02/24/auguste-renoir-by-bob-kessel/#comments Fri, 24 Feb 2012 11:05:15 +0000 admin http://www.bobkessel.com/?p=5309

Pierre-Auguste Renoir by Bob Kessel

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born February 25, 1841 in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France.

Renoir’s paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings.

In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water en plein air (in the open air), he and his friend Claude Monet discovered that the color of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them, an effect today known as diffuse reflection. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet, working side-by-side, depicted the same scenes (La Grenouillère, 1869).

In 1890, he married Aline Victorine Charigot, who, along with a number of the artist’s friends, had already served as a model for Le Déjeuner des canotiers (Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881), and with whom he already had a child, Pierre, in 1885. After his marriage, Renoir painted many scenes of his wife and daily family life, including their children and their nurse, Aline’s cousin Gabrielle Renard. The Renoirs had three sons, one of whom, Jean, became a filmmaker of note and another, Pierre, became a stage and film actor. He died December 3,  1919 at the age of 78.

A prolific artist, he made several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir’s style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently-reproduced works in the history of art.

WINSLOW HOMER QUOTE by Bob Kessel

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Winslow Homer was born February 24, 1836. He was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art.

Largely self-taught, Homer began his career working as a commercial illustrator. He subsequently took up oil painting and produced major studio works characterized by the weight and density he exploited from the medium. He also worked extensively in watercolor, creating a fluid and prolific oeuvre, primarily chronicling his working vacations.

Homer’s career as an illustrator lasted nearly twenty years. He contributed to magazines such as Ballou’s Pictorial and Harper’s Weekly, at a time when the market for illustrations was growing rapidly, and when fads and fashions were changing quickly. His early works, mostly commercial engravings of urban and country social scenes, are characterized by clean outlines, simplified forms, dramatic contrast of light and dark, and lively figure groupings — qualities that remained important throughout his career. His quick success was mostly due to this strong understanding of graphic design and also to the adaptability of his designs to wood engraving.

Homer died in 1910 at the age of 74 in his Prout’s Neck studio and was interred in the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His painting, Shooting the Rapids, Saguenay River, remains unfinished.

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PROUT’S NECK by Bob Kessel after Winslow Homer

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PROUT’S NECK by Winslow Homer