Ancient art for 21st century kids: Saskia Janssen illustrates Greek vases with children’s cartoon characters

Back in the illustrious days of the ancient Greeks, vase painters would illustrate pots and jugs with popular mythological stories that everyone knew and loved. In Saskia Janssen’s recent series Expensive Vases for Children, she does the same thing, but for a 21st century audience. She reimagines ancient Greek vases with the instantly recognisable stories and characters from children’s cartoons. “This series started with a drawing of an old greek vase with Peppa Pig on it,” she tells It’s Nice That. “I was thinking: “How nice is it, if you combine old Greek vases with famous icons for children?””

In the series you’ll find the elegant forms of amphoras doodled over with the smiling face of Thomas the Tank Engine, the self-satisfied grin of Garfield the cat and The Teletubbies’ Tinky Winky giving us a benevolent wave. Reinterpreting these lofty relics of art history, Saskia wanted to experiment with how the “value of the vase changed” when seen through children’s eyes. Interested in exploring what happens when “different periods are combined”, Saskia’s series is a goldmine of that syncretic visual power that occurs when ancient and old, highbrow and lowbrow come crashing together.

We last spoke to Saskia back in 2020 when she discussed her interest in the contrast between “artificiality and authenticity”, her creative path from theatre to illustration and how she uses funny stock photos for inspiration when drawing. In the time that’s passed since we last spoke, Saskia has been getting a lot of joy out of exploring the infinitely intriguing relationship between humans and animals.

This fascination has led her to create a humorous series of portraits depicting pets that look like their owners. With the lolling tongue of “Vicky” in one illustration and the expectant wide-eyed look of “Hector” in another, the series seems to beg the question: do our pets look like us or are we starting to look more like them? As our Instagram feeds become increasingly awash with animal and pet memes, it’s impossible not to make these humorous connections. Saskia highlights this very human tendency to turn to the animal world for entertainment in her illustration Dolphin vs Human. Satirising our animal-crazed society from the perspective of animals, the illustration depicts a smiling swimmer waltzing happily with a dolphin. “I hate humans,” says the long-suffering dolphin.

Since last speaking, Saskia explains that she’s been getting “more assignments that really rhyme with my style”. While she often depicts bodies in more realistic dimensions for commissions, her work for Berliner Zeitung allowed her to delve into the less naturalistic proportions of the characters which fill her sketchbooks. Recently, she’s also found that she’s getting better at “making choices” when drawing. Rather than trying to squash all her ideas into one illustration she now goes by the wise tenet: “less is more”.

Looking to the future, Saskia would like to create some of her “expensive vases for children” in real life. She imagines them in an exhibition “with not only drawing but also performance art with actors and dark rides and magic shows – the total Studio Ski experience.”