Note from Donald Ault, about Barks's Disney paintings

Daniel van Eijmeren dve at kabelfoon.nl
Fri Sep 12 05:14:43 CEST 2003


Here's a note from Donald Ault.

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From: "Donald D. Ault" <donaldault at pop.net>
To: "Daniel van Eijmeren" <dve at kabelfoon.nl>
Subject: Re: Barks's Disney paintings, inspired or custum-ordered?
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 21:04:43 -0400

[...]

The first money bin ("Pleasure in the Treasure") was commissioned by San
Francisco comics store owner and publisher Gary Arlington. It was ordered
through me, and Gary specifically told me to tell Carl that he could
painting anything he wanted. (I remember that Gary said something to the
effect that he'd had lots of experience with creative people like R. Crumb,
and they always did their best when they were given free reign.) So the idea
of a "money bin" painting was Carl's own. Gary Arlington didn't indicate in
any way what he wanted--except that it be an original composition and not a
recreation of one of the covers as most of the early paintings had been. We
discussed this at length in part of my 1997 interview, excerpts from which
appear on pages 194-95 of my Barks Conversations book. This fact about
Arlington's "no strings" request is referred to on page 88 of the Fine Art
book as well.

The subject matter of the other two paintings mentioned was generally
dictated by potential buyers--one who wanted a Christmas scene and one who
wanted a "posed" picture of the some of the major characters. The Christmas
scene, however, went up for public auction through Russ Cochran, and the
potential buyer who had requested that topic ended up buying it for the
highest bid. The "Blue Ducks" painting was sold directly to the person who
originally suggested the "posed characters" painting idea.

Donald Ault
Professor of English
University of Florida
ault at ufl.edu
http://www.nwe.ufl.edu/~donault/




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