The artwork of Joseph Park

December 13, 2005 1:53 PM

Faceless lovers in purple moonlight, pin-up elephants, chess playing rabbits (in sepia). The anthropomorphic anime, noir, and classic film inspired paintings of Joseph Park.
posted by iamck (16 comments total)

That's some weird-ass chess.
posted by soyjoy at 1:55 PM on December 13, 2005

It's rabbit chess. Duh.
posted by iamck at 2:02 PM on December 13, 2005

That's the ancient and superb game of Go, not chess.

It's a game that humans still kick computer's butts at. It has like five rules (easy to learn) but becoming proficient at it's strategy is much more difficult to master than chess (there are far more combinations of moves to consider).

I like Go.
posted by wires at 2:04 PM on December 13, 2005

I <3 pop surrealism... i went a binge the other day researching random people and put together a list of about 6 or 7 (a href="http://www.itineratesurfer.com/?p=46#comments">self link) I will have to add him. These are excellent, thanks.
posted by sourbrew at 2:05 PM on December 13, 2005

crap


self link
posted by sourbrew at 2:05 PM on December 13, 2005

sour -

Surely then you've heard of Roq La Rue? (Owner Kirsten Anderson also has a pretty good blog)
posted by iamck at 2:09 PM on December 13, 2005

The elephant is from an odalisque by Ingres:

http://www.orientalist-art.org.uk/ingres1.html
posted by agentmitten at 2:11 PM on December 13, 2005

iamck - yeah, my sister lives out in seattle, and the next time i get out there I'm planning on swinging by.
posted by sourbrew at 2:13 PM on December 13, 2005

wires writes " That's the ancient and superb game of Go, not chess."

Well, the title of the painting is "Chess", and I don't see any black stones, so I'm going to go with iamck: it's rabbit chess.
posted by mr_roboto at 2:39 PM on December 13, 2005

I like Go.

I like Go too, but the name of the painting is "Chess."
posted by soyjoy at 2:40 PM on December 13, 2005

Grrrrrr. I blame live preview.
posted by soyjoy at 2:40 PM on December 13, 2005

I know Joe. His wife, Deborah, was a former co-worker of mine. He works his ass off. I'm glad people are finally taking note.

There are couple other local painters I love - Ruth Hesse for one. Mike Spafford for another. And former Seattleite Jaq Chartier - you may know her from her Foo fighter album cover (in collaboration with her exhusband and my dear friend illustrator Tim Gabor).
posted by tkchrist at 3:25 PM on December 13, 2005

The Frye Museum in Seatte just had a show of his stuff this year. It's amazing in person.
posted by Bear at 3:27 PM on December 13, 2005

That's neither go nor chess those rabbits are playing. It's a Chinese game, Xiang-qi, also known as Chinese Chess. The flat round pieces are a dead giveaway. You can read about it here on the Chess Variant pages (which is probably worthy of an FPP by itself, if it hasn't been done already).
posted by wanderingmind at 5:33 PM on December 13, 2005

this is awesome, thank you!
posted by mayfly wake at 12:13 AM on December 14, 2005

Ugh. This stuff is crap. Especially the Lovers in Moonlight one, jesus. It has the vectored look of Illustrator, but with a reliance on lame cell-animation. It's busy, and seems designed for a corporate lobby, or a Starbucks where it could set off the earth-toned psuedo-'70s browns and oranges.
posted by klangklangston at 6:48 AM on December 14, 2005