Gary Baseman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gary Baseman (born 1960) is a visual artist, particularly known as an illustrator and cartoonist, who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Baseman received a degree, Phi Beta Kappa, from UCLA in 1982, and pursued a career in law in New York for 10 years before beginning work in the arts. He has since worked as a fine artist, commercial artist, editorial artist, and, perhaps most famously, as a television and film artist.
His work is distinguished by deliberately simple designs and vivid use of color. He has cited influences as varied as Warner Brothers cartoons, vintage American comic strips, Hieronymus Bosch, Day of the Dead artifacts, and Japanese pop art. Baseman's work is part of the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Modern Art in Rome. As an illustrator, his corporate clients include Gatorade, Mercedes-Benz, and Nike. He also created the art for the popular board game Cranium.
Baseman is a creator and an executive producer of the animated television series for ABC/Disney called Teacher's Pet, which won the Emmy award for Best Daytime Animated series three times (two years consecutively), as well as a British Emmy (BAFTA) for best International Children's Programming. Teacher’s Pet was adapted to a feature film released by Buena Vista/Walt Disney Pictures in 2004.
A prolific artist, his work has appeared on the pages of Esquire, Forbes, GQ, The New Yorker, Time, Reader's Digest and Rolling Stone magazines, as well as in The New York Times. Chronicle Books published a monograph of his work titled Dumb Luck: The Art of Gary Baseman, in 2004. Baseman is further renown as a creator of designer toys, most notably his Dunny figures, produced by American company Kid Robot, and Qee figures, produced by Hong Kong-based Toy2R.
[edit] References
Baseman, Gary; Pao & Paws [2004]. Dumb Luck: The Art of Gary Baseman (Hardcover) (in English), Chronicle Books, 336. ISBN 0-8118-4423-4.
[edit] Major works
- Dumb Luck: The Art of Gary Baseman (ISBN 0-8118-4423-4)
- American Illustration 22 (ISBN 1-886212-20-1)
- Modular Populous (ISBN 0-9724888-1-2)
- Dark Horse Deluxe Journal: Gary Baseman (ISBN 1-59307-061-6)
- Dark Horse Deluxe Stationery Exotique: Gary Baseman's Black Cat Serenade (ISBN 1-56971-923-3)
