Got an email ad from a Chelsea gallery, a respectable one, a gallery any artist would be proud to have representing them.

The artworks are little colored pencil drawings. Glad for small. We need more small.

But the work is cutesy illustration-style. Another illustration-level take on the human figure. Also a swan and a unicorn.

Every day there’s a different take on the human figure. And it’s never revealing, never dimensional and of course never new. It’s always some doll-like stylization, rounded outlines, sometimes even a doughy look.

In many you see hints of the plain super-simplified digital illustration style that predominates on websites and video promos. Stand-ins for drawings digital artists can kick out in ten minutes, complete and ready to upload.

A complete emptying-out of what a human body means, stands for, a scrubbing away of lifelike essence until all that’s left are biscuit bodies, noodle lines, noodle arms and legs, and round, psychology-free faces.

They’re so vapid I find myself wishing for Botero, of all people. A glorified, gloriously limited cartoonist.