Von: Goofy3...@aol.comDatum: Sa 21 Okt. 2006 04:11E-Mail: Goofy3...@aol.comGruppen: fa.disney-comics
Galeries nationales du Grand Palais Paris - IL ÉTAIT UNE FOIS WALT DISNEY
13. September 2006 - 16. January 2007Aux sources de l'art des studios DisneyGaleries nationales du Grand Palais Paris - 16 septembre 2006 - 15 janvier 2007Museum of Modern Art Montreal - March 8, 2007 - June 24, 2007
I went to this exhibition last weekend, I've never seen such an interrestingand fresh look at Disney's work.
First because of the huge work of research (most of the exhibition is aboutDisney's influences for his films from Snow white to Jungle Book, and also inhis early b/w cartoons. So you get to see great canvas from various artistsand periods (including a wonderful one by Philippe Rousseau), and also lots ofbooks Disney used to bring back from his travels in Europe and thatcountains illustrations with anthropomized animals, such as Granville and Teniel andRackham.
Then the setting is also fabulous! Wonderful decoration, (some documents areshown in golden snw-white like glass coffins), great organisations for thevideos displaying (in one room you have two big screens, one with extractedsequences from bw MM , and the other with sequences from early 1920's horrormovies (Murnau's Faust, Frankenstein, King Kong,...) Disney used for hisinspiration. These greatly synchronized video parallel are also used a few timesfurther in the exhibition (fir instance Gertie the Dinosaur / the dinosaursequence in Fantasia).
Of course, Disney fans all knew about those influences, but AFAIK, it hadnever been concretized that way, and I don't think it had been explored thatdeeply so far.
There are also lots of figurines animators used for shadows and 3d vision ofthe characters (you get to see some of those in "The Reluctant Dragon), lotsof beautiful studies and backgrounds from Disney movies (my favorite oneswere one from Pinocchio and another beautiful study of Sleeping Beauty's housein the woods by Eyvind Earle). You can also see a scaled model of DisneylandParis' Sleeping Beauty Castle.
One of the things I really enjoyed watching was the projection of theDali/Disney surreal project that was never finished, and which was re-made indigital animation in 2001, Destino, which is not even available on eMule (exceptif you're looking for bad quality porn), and which has only been shown infestivals, and before a projection of "Les Triplettes de Belleville" in the USA,even though they planned to do a dvd which was never released. And there'seven a few sketches by Dali himself which I really enjoyed (my favorite one is aswan near a tree, and their reflect in water is an elephant, the swan'w neckbecomes the elephant's nose).
Then, the last room was dedicated to contemporary artists that wereinfluenced, with really good choices, there's aven a Warhol Donald Duck canvas, and also a beautiful piece of Gottfried Helnwein which I happen to have beenloving for years, "American Dream". I also loved Bertrand Lavier's work : hereproduced abstract canvas and sculptures seen in an old Mickey Mouse comicbookgag!!! That's somehting I always thought about doing so I appreciated it a lot!I think barks also used to show silly abstract sculptures, so that guy couldhave choose his work instead...
As a conclusion I'd say that besides giving you that never before seen lookat Disney's work, and overflow your heart with flashbacks from your childhood,It really explains to people and especially artists that no matter howtalented you are, you can hardly produce something that imortally goes throughtimes if you don't have inspirations, and that culture is not something static,its made of a superposition of layers communicating with eachother, a littlebit like cellos :-) Everything is linked.
About the medias, there is indeed a DVD, with the great Arte program relatedto the exhibition, a very complete book that costs about 45 euros if Irecall well, and Olivier, you probably also want to get the Telerama hors sérieabout it :-) It's also really good. In the Grand Palais shop you also have lotsof books related to Disney and reeditions of old books Disney brought backfrom his travels, such as "Le Roman du Renard"...
The queue wasn't very long, but there was lots of people inside, includingchildren, which was a bit annoying :-)