John Kricfalusi Does Hollywood

For my money, these recent celebrity caricatures by John Kricfalusi are some of the most outstanding examples of caricature I’ve seen in a long time. We tend to overlook the quirks of people’s facial features, but John picks up on these slight differences in our human architecture and exaggerates them to achieve a grotesquely beautiful comic effect. This is not the generic exaggeration of facial and body features that typifies most caricature work today (eg. almost anything in ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY); these drawings have an intensity and specificity that truly comes from another place. It’s the same reason I love the work of Ronald Searle and Expressionists like George Grosz and Otto Dix: these artists, like John, don’t rely on the stereotypical images of beauty that have guided artists for centuries. Rather, they draw from the gut and search out their own truths, and the resulting work is infinitely richer and more honest.