Shelled ‘Peanuts’

By Kristen Peterson (contact)

Friday, Sept. 25, 2009 | 2 a.m.

PUBLICITY PHOTOS

“Ellsworth Peanuts” by the artists of Ripper Jordan is a collection of 20-inch circular paintings of Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts” characters. The circles at left represent, from top, Peppermint Patty, Linus and Lucy. Ripper Jordan has made a name selling affordable retail art.

Over the summer, a trio of artists known as Ripper Jordan created a piece titled “Nine Paintings of Paintings.”

On display at Trifecta Gallery in July, it replicated nine cartoonized monochromatic paintings that were used in a magazine illustration, turning them into a large-scale gallery piece — which sold on opening night.

And that wasn’t the end of it.

For “Ellsworth Peanuts,” opening today at MCQ Fine Art, Ripper Jordan artists Sean Slattery, James Hough and David Ryan have created a series of works that merge cartoonist Charles Schulz with contemporary artist Ellsworth Kelly. The result is abstract representations of “Peanuts” characters — Peppermint Patty, Linus, Lucy, etc.

The 20-inch circular paintings might seem a little out of place for MCQ Fine Art, which has exhibited works by Kelly, Richard Serra and Vera Lutter and includes Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Ed Ruscha in its inventory.

But it’s also out of place for Ripper Jordan. The group of serious artists started Ripper Jordan as a business venture — making and selling humorous and affordable retail art — T-shirts, buttons, woodcut wall hangings, comics.

The products, it turned out, appealed not only to angst-ridden teens and hipster twentysomethings, but also to art collectors snapping up the whimsical woodcut wall hangings of grass, Venus fly traps, Abe Lincolns, Jesuses and vulgarities.

Slattery says that retail art is still the plan and that the gallery shows actually help them conduct research on the marketability of Ripper Jordan wares. Just don’t expect cheap art at these exhibits, even though “Ellsworth Peanuts” is another prime example of Ripper Jordan’s reaching out to all audiences by melding the lines of Schulz with the color of Kelly.

“We really wanted to do something that would respond to the gallery in terms of its core audience,” Slattery says. “It was a commentary on blue-chip art and a result of ‘What would happen if we did this?’

“It was a little humor, a way of saying that you don’t need the source to be serious to hold a piece of art in high esteem.”