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Aspland Westbridge |
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IT ALL STARTED WITH SID VICIUS. SEBASTIAN KRUGER (born 1963) grew up in Hamiln, Germany, where the Pied Piper used to pull a crowd, He was first drawn to music by the Sex Pistols, but when Sid took the final curtain Kruger decided that punk was pass’e and began to look around for another band to obsess over. His gaze fell upon The Rolling Stones. |
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“I’ve always loved Keith and Ronnie,” he says. “Especially Keith’s face.” |
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Which will be why Keith’s face dominates The Stones by Kruger, his superb book of caricatures of Dartford’s finest. Using a variety of media and styles, Kruger paints affectionate grotesques that reveal crucial facets of the Stones’ personae. A penis-fingered Mick– his eyes always saying “Don’t come too close”– flutters the rubber petals of his lips or appears as Donald, Duck-diving into a cellarful of cash. Charlie is rendered like old charcoal portraits |
| of Duke Elington, or oil-painted Bernard Buffet-style to resemble an icon of the Modern Jazz boom. Ronnie is the clown; bulgy-orbed, false-nosed and vertically-coiffed. Bill is blue. |
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But mostly it’s Keef, eyes fixed in an inscrutable glare and marinated in bourbon: Keef crumbled into the shadows with an acoustic; Keef behind shades and under hats; still life with keef and a skull; Keef hugging john Lee Hooker; Keef fisting a Jagger glove puppet; Keef scratchily sketched with a broken nib to look like he only just made it into work... |
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Kruger puts his fascination with the Stones down to his interest in “faces you can’t see at first”, and has met the band many times since he began painting them. He found Mick very cool, Keith very warm (he promised to sit for Kruger soon) and made a firm friend in Ronnie |
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“we share the same hobbies, painting and, er, yeah.” |
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