For the Love of Bart Simpson

With his long angular face, his spiky hair that resembles the peaks of a mountain range, and his big round eyes, Bart Simpson, the mischievous son of the perfect middle-class American family created by Matt Groening, would be recognised anywhere. These characteristics seem to have inspired Ken Kagami, a Japanese artist born in 1974 who lives and works in Tokyo.

In his book Bartworks, the artist gathers images of this little yellow hero, reinterpreting his features in the craziest ways. Although he confesses that he started drawing Bart because he found the character easy to sketch, Ken Kagami does not consider himself, despite his numerous drawings, an illustrator. ‘I am not an illustrator but I use the vocabulary of illustration for my art because it is easy to draw. This is the most direct way to get across my humour and my goal is to generate laughter!’ Ken Kagami explains in an interview with It’s Nice That.

Imaginative outlines

Although the structure of the face—the eyes and lips—remains identical, the artist lets his pen run wild and distort Bart’s outline: sometimes he ends up bald, and at other times with a thick column of hair, when the top of his head isn’t taking on all the different geometric shapes possible. 

This project appears to have got Ken Kagami’s creativity flowing as, in 2018, he started a new opus dedicated to Bart Simpson, Bartworks 2. 

Bartworks (2015) by Ken Kagami is published by Nieves.