KAWS • Man's Best Friend

Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
September 13, 2014 - October 31, 2014

The recent KAWS show at the Honor Fraser asks very loudly:

What is caricature?

And what is a cartoon in 2014?

The lines defining that in people’s minds (literally) have been blurred.

Appropriating Charles Schultz’s Charlie Brown characters and adding a few from Hanna-Barbera, New York based Fine Artist and SVA graduate, Brian Donnelly (aka: KAWS) pulls lines, colors and shape from commercial art in order to define what a cartoon is.

It is Charlie Brown. It is Snoopy.

But it’s also color and black line on white canvas.

And it’s also exaggeration.

And by dissecting these elements and exaggerating them even further, KAWS has created a frenetic body of work that speaks collectively and independently on what makes a cartooned image.

He plays wildly with emotional color.

He enjoys the arbitrary nature of a scribbled line.

He plays with the fact that the public itself has become confused about what Fine Art is and why it is not Commercial Art and that’s because the world we live in 2014 has become a ‘Pigpen’ of a retailed marketing. And he ties all this together by using linear lines and collage to trace the path we’ve traveled from Cartoon to Abstract Pop Art painting.

KAWS • “MAN’S BEST FRIEND” was on display at the Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, California from September 13, 2014 through October 31, 2014.

All Artwork is © KAWS

Review is © Ron Barbagallo 2014

© KAWS

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ARTICLES ON AESTHETICS IN ANIMATION

BY RON BARBAGALLO:

The Art of Making Pixar's Ratatouille is revealed by way of an introductory article followed by interviews with production designer Harley Jessup, director of photography/lighting Sharon Calahan and the film's writer/director Brad Bird.

Design with a Purpose, an interview with Ralph Eggleston uses production art from Wall-E to illustrate the production design of Pixar's cautionary tale of a robot on a futuristic Earth.

Shedding Light on the Little Matchgirl traces the path director Roger Allers and the Disney Studio took in adapting the Hans Christian Andersen story to animation.

The Destiny of Dalí's Destino, in 1946, Walt Disney invited Salvador Dalí to create an animated short based upon his surrealist art. This writing illustrates how this short got started and tells the story of the film's aesthetic.

A Blade Of Grass is a tour through the aesthetics of 2D background painting at the Disney Studio from 1928 through 1942.

Lorenzo, director / production designer Mike Gabriel created a visual tour de force in this Academy Award® nominated Disney short. This article chronicles how the short was made and includes an interview with Mike Gabriel.

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, an interview with Graham G. Maiden's narrates the process involved with taking Tim Burton's concept art and translating Tim's sketches and paintings into fully articulated stop motion puppets.

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit, in an interview exclusive to this web site, Nick Park speaks about his influences, on how he uses drawing to tell a story and tells us what it was like to bring Wallace and Gromit to the big screen.

For a complete list of PUBLISHED WORK AND WRITINGS by Ron Barbagallo,

click on the link above and scroll down.

KAWS • MAN'S BEST FRIEND

© 2014 Ron Barbagallo