File:John Wesley UtamaroWashing,BumsteadSleeping 2003.jpg

Painting by John Wesley, Utamaro Washing, Bumstead Sleeping (acrylic on canvas, 62" x 43", 2003). The image illustrates a longstanding body of work by John Wesley from the 1970s through the 2000s, in which he incorporated characters from popular 1950s comic strips such as Blondie, Popeye and Dennis the Menace in his paintings. Many of these paintings focused on the character Dagwood Bumstead from Blondie. In this later work, the 2000s, he added a new twist to the Dagwood works, incorporating a female character that paid homage to the Japanese ukiyo-e genre and eighteenth-century master, Kitagawa Utamaro, exploring shared erotic preoccupations between them. Works from this body of work was publicly exhibited in prominent exhibitions, discussed in major art journals and daily press publications and acquired major art institutions.

Artist John Wesley. Copyright held by the artist.

John Wesley (artist)

Entire artwork

Yes

The image serves an informational and educational purpose as the primary means of illustrating a late body of work by John Wesley in the 2000s: his paintings which carried forward a longstanding engagement (since 1973) with popular 1950s characters from comic strips such as Blondie, Popeye and Dennis the Menace, while updating them with art-historical references. In these works, he placed comics characters in ambiguous, primal or darkly humorous scenarios through which he explored eroticism, frustration, terror, despair or violence within mundane, everyday life. A major group of these paintings focused on the character Dagwood Bumstead from Blondie, who critics suggested functioned as a stand-in for Wesley’s missing father. Because the article is about an artist and his work, the omission of the image would significantly limit a reader's understanding and ability to understand this key body of work, which brought Wesley his widest recognition through exhibitions, coverage by major critics and publications, and museum acquisitions. Wesley's work of this type and this series is discussed in the article and by critics cited in the article.

There is no free equivalent of this or any other of this series by John Wesley, so the image cannot be replaced by a free image.

The image will not affect the value of the original work or limit the copyright holder's rights or ability to distribute the original due to its low resolution and the general workings of the art market, which values the actual work of art. Because of the low resolution, illegal copies could not be made.