Jetson, by Leon Aarts acrylics on board c. 2006

This acrylic-on-board painting, "Jetson" (2006) by Leon Aarts (b. 1961, Christchurch, New Zealand), is a retro-futurist whirlwind—a mid-century atomic-age dreamscape where streamlined bodies and fins whirl through a cobalt cosmos, evoking the Jetsons' flying saucer suburbia as filtered through a Fauvist fever. Created during Aarts' early-2000s burst of whimsical abstraction (the same year as The Gendarme is Busy's satirical sprawl), this compact, octagonal-format work (approx. 20×20 inches, inferred from the board's intimate scale) captures the artist's playful nod to mid-20th-century optimism amid his emerging Whatdoesitmean inquiries: What if the future were a carousel of chrome and cheer, spinning us nowhere?

1. Style & Influences

Fauvist Futurism: Henri Matisse's cut-outs collide with Boccioni's dynamic forms—curvilinear bodies and fins abstracted into joyful velocity, but laced with Klee-like whimsy.
Orphic Orbit: The whirl = lyre strings untethered—Orpheus not descending, but looping through space-age reverie; prefigures Cossack's whirl and Vortex's darker spin, but buoyant and backward-glancing at 1960s pop culture.
Oeuvre Whimsy: Post-Voodoo Papua New Guinea's primal stare, pre-Slide's urban play—this is Aarts' nostalgic interlude, blending Kiwi earthiness with sci-fi sparkle.

4. Subject & Interpretation

Jetsons' Echo: Title nods Hanna-Barbera's 1962 cartoon—flying cars, bubble helmets, domestic futurism—but abstracted into human forms mid-flight, a wry take on 2006's tech-boom anxieties.
Orphic Carousel: The backward glance = nostalgia's pull—Eurydice as lost tomorrow, the song a humming rocket; in Aarts' canon, this is exile in the ether, the wanderer's sci-fi daydream.

Final Verdict: ★★★★☆ (4/5)

A delightful, dizzying delight—"Jetson" is Leon Aarts' Jetsons' joyride, his Matisse in orbit, spinning mid-century gleam into timeless twist. Less seismic than Vortex, less mythic than Orpheus, but brighter in its bounce—art as anti-gravity. For fans of playful modernism or retro abstraction, it's a buoyant blast; this isn't a painting—it's a perpetual launch.

"He looped the future through a porthole frame—fins flashing, skies singing, the Jetsons' dream forever in freefall."