Contemporary Artists that have been influenced by animation.

The Hero, The Leader, The God.

Alexandre Kosolapov makes sculptures and graphics that play on commercialism, but also uses animated icons like Mickey to make blunt statements about politics, religion and popular culture. Such western icon such as Mickey is used by a lot of artists as a political vessel. I think it says a lot about Disney as a company and how it's become a product of commercialism and making a sizeable profit rather than being routed in animation just being for passion and joy, and sharing this joy. While I don't believe all Disney cartoons are the work of the devils, by no means. Disney definitely helped animation evolve to a point, but as far as experimentation Disney falls very short in recent times, they are pretty much too scared to try anything too wacky, because of money. They push for a lot of sequels.

Tan Tan Bo Puking, a.k.a. Gero Tan

Takashi Murakami also uses a character he calls DOB that has similar attributes to Mickey as sort of his signature and alter-ego. Here's a painting of DOB that looks very skewed. Murakami also seems to incorporate a lot of his anime influences he maybe had as a child and recently.

Gary Baseman, a painter, sculptural artist was clearly takes a lot of his influences from animation, day of the dead, his childhood and toys. His stuff is sickly sweet, personally I interpret his work as a look at childhood innocence but also sexuality, death, suffering and dreams. Baseman is a big influence for me. Baseman has funnily enough worked on a Disney cartoon that incorporated his style called "Teacher's Pet". I thought that was kind of ironic. Other artists that work similary to Baseman are Tim Biskup and Amanda Visell. They probably all know each other in fact. They definitely influence the "vinyl toy movement" (I could probably make a whole seperate blog about that though).

This is the intro for the cartoon. I use to watch this as a kid and it's actually how I discovered Baseman. Since looking a lot at Baseman's work the show has lost a lot of appeal for me. That song is so corny.. They really sugar coated it to the extreme..

Other painters that gain influence from animation: Ron English, Mark Ryden, Ana Bagayan and Anthony Ausgang etc. They all try and convey similar messages though. Never really been into most of their super-polished looking stuff though. Ausgang is probably my favourite out of those names anyway.

Anthony Ausgang:

Ron English:

Ana Bagayan:

Mark Ryden: