Keita Sagaki reproduces classic paintings using hundreds of tiny manga characters

Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" is one of the world's most reproduced and reinterpreted paintings -- but no one has done it quite like Japanese artist Keita Sagaki.
From a distance, Sagaki's replica looks like a pen-and-ink version of the original. But a closer inspection reveals that the picture is composed from hundreds of tiny cartoon characters. A drawing of a dog lies along the Mona Lisa's cheekbone, while a smiling cat sits on the end of her nose. A cartoon of the planet Saturn can be found floating on her forehead.

Some of the characters might look familiar to fans of Japanese anime and manga. But while all of the cartoons in his works are technically original, Sagaki admits that he is heavily inspired by artists and collectives like Osamu Tezuka, Fuji Fujiko and Studio Ghibli.
High and low, East and West
The "Mona Lisa" isn't the only Old Master painting that Sagaki has reproduced using manga-inspired characters -- he has also created his own versions of Leonardo's "The Last Supper," Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" and Hokusai's "The Great Wave off Kanagawa," among others.

He began reproducing famous artworks in his distinctive style back in 2004, seeing it as an interesting way to combine Western art with the manga and anime characters he'd loved as a child.
"Western paintings and Japanese art contain many conflicting concepts," Sagaki explained in an email interview. "Western paintings offer depth, while my characters are flat. Even in many classical Japanese paintings, perspective is not used much."

This fusion of Western masterpieces with Japanese pop culture has won Sagaki fans all over the world, with his art appearing in exhibitions as far afield as Germany and Portugal. He's currently preparing for an exhibition at Hong Kong's Fabrik Gallery in March, where he'll unveil new works based on Baroque paintings. Among them are reproductions of "Boy with a Basket of Fruit" by Caravaggio, "Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window" by Johannes Vermeer and "A Woman Bathing in a Stream" by Rembrandt.

Source: cnn