7 Things You Should Know About Art Provocateur Gary Baseman
He has just collaborated with Coach on their Spring 2015 collection, but there's more to Gary Baseman than those odd playful creatures you see on the tees.
By DAVID FUHRMANN LIM,
Coach Spring Summer 2015 features Gary Baseman's art
Coach’s Spring 2015 collection is a journey across America that combines the sub-cultures of music, skate and surf. The outfits and accessories feature original drawings by Californian artist and animator Gary Baseman, which introduces a series of darkly playful creatures, each developed with a story of the Coach girl in mind. The art might look familiar, but there’s a lot more about Baseman under that veneer. Here are some fun things you didn’t know:
1 He coined the term “Pervasive Art” , as an alternative to lowbrow art.
2 He is the fourth child of holocaust survivors from Ukraine
3 He once described his art as a mix of “Hieronymous Bosch, mixed with Day of the Dead, mixed with my Eastern European roots, mixed with a certain sensibility of cute Japanese pop art, mixed with my love of Americana."
They have names! From left: Buster Le Fauve, Buddy Boy and Emmanuel Hare Ray
4 He consider as his contemporaries Mark Ryden, J. Otto Siebold, William Joyce, Yoshitomo Nara, Benedict Taschen, Haruki Murakami and Ian Faulkner.
5 He reckons The Simpsons the best ever written TV show.
6 He has a formula for success:
S = HW x P x DL/BD x ND
(Where S = Success, HW = Hard Work, P = Persistence, DL = Dumb Luck, BS = Bull Sh*t, ND = Natural Disasters.)
7 Paul Frank’s Julius character was inspired by Baseman’s work.