Curating Art at the Intersection of Art and Architecture
The English caricature artist Jonathan Cusick paints with a wit and superb technical ability that make his paintings fun, beautiful and contagious with delight.
Oscar Wilde was one of the greatest wits in the English language. He was a caricature in real life. So what better subject for Jonathan Cusick?
Oscar Wilde toured America in the early 1880s. He disembarked at New York City and reputedly was asked by a customs official if he had anything to declare, and he supposedly replied: “I have nothing to declare but my genius.”
Wilde took the train to Chicago and walked up Michigan Avenue and encountered the Water Tower, a landmark that was legend for surviving the Great Chicago Fire. The limestone Water Tower hid the pressure regulator for the water pumping station across the street. Wilde called it “a castellated monstrousity with pepper boxes stuck all over it.”
So when I commissioned Cusick to for a portriat of Wilde, I asked him to include the. So Jonathan went to work and came up with 2 versions and he made a small and large mockup of one. In the first–which was my idea–Wilde is standing in front of the Tower. He made two versions–small and large. Next, Jonathan really thought about how to create a reference in a more clever manner. He painted a Water Tower lapel pin and added it Wilde’s collar.
You can scroll to the see the mockups and a closeup of the lapel pin. The first version is the final one.
Jonathan Cusick’s website
#jonathancusick #caricature #caricatureartist #oscarwilde #oscarwildeinchicago
The English caricature artist Jonathan Cusick paints with a wit and superb technical ability that make his paintings fun, beautiful and contagious with delight.
Oscar Wilde was one of the greatest wits in the English language. He was a caricature in real life. So what better subject for Jonathan Cusick?
Oscar Wilde toured America in the early 1880s. He disembarked at New York City and reputedly was asked by a customs official if he had anything to declare, and he supposedly replied: “I have nothing to declare but my genius.”
Wilde took the train to Chicago and walked up Michigan Avenue and encountered the Water Tower, a landmark that was legend for surviving the Great Chicago Fire. The limestone Water Tower hid the pressure regulator for the water pumping station across the street. Wilde called it “a castellated monstrousity with pepper boxes stuck all over it.”
So when I commissioned Cusick to for a portriat of Wilde, I asked him to include the. So Jonathan went to work and came up with 2 versions and he made a small and large mockup of one. In the first–which was my idea–Wilde is standing in front of the Tower. He made two versions–small and large. Next, Jonathan really thought about how to create a reference in a more clever manner. He painted a Water Tower lapel pin and added it Wilde’s collar.
You can scroll to the see the mockups and a closeup of the lapel pin. The first version is the final one.
Jonathan Cusick’s website
#jonathancusick #caricature #caricatureartist #oscarwilde #oscarwildeinchicago