Weekend pop art: Tom of Tom and Jerry squished, rolled and generally bent out of shape

Posted on by aussiemoose
(image via Twitter (c) Taka Inoue)

 

I watched a lot of cartoons as a kid.

A LOT.

One of my great favourites was good old Tom and Jerry, created in 1940 by William Hanna and Joseph Barbara, in which a persistent cat (Tom) was always bested by a wily, cheeky mouse (Jerry) and ended up in all kinds of awkward situations that were existentially humiliating, and most importantly to Japanese artist Taka Inoue, physically hilarious.

Inoue has rather inspiringly taken these moments of being squashed into the shape of a mousehole, contoured into the rather cosy confines of a jar and given a rather crab-by contour and created some really fun art.

So wonderfully well does Inou capture Tom’s moments of mouse-ian humiliation that it feels like the classic cartoons, which are as ingeniously amusing now as they were at the time of their creation, have sprung fabulously and gloriously to life in ways that almost make you feel sorry for Tom.

Almost …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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