Disney exhibition in Paris ! ! ! You guys must see that!

[Goofy313g at aol.com]

I went to this exhibition last weekend, I've never seen such an  interresting 
and fresh look at Disney's work.
 
First because of the huge work of research (most of the exhibition is about  
Disney's influences for his films from Snow white to Jungle Book, and also in  
his early b/w cartoons. So you get to see great canvas from various artists 
and  periods (including a wonderful one by Philippe Rousseau), and also lots of 
books  Disney used to bring back from his travels in Europe and that 
countains  illustrations with anthropomized animals, such as Granville and Teniel and  
Rackham.
 
Then the setting is also fabulous! Wonderful decoration, (some documents  are 
shown in golden snw-white like glass coffins), great organisations for the  
videos displaying (in one room you have two big screens, one with extracted  
sequences from bw MM , and the other with sequences from early 1920's horror  
movies (Murnau's Faust, Frankenstein, King Kong,...) Disney used for his  
inspiration. These greatly synchronized video parallel are also used a few times  
further in the exhibition (fir instance Gertie the Dinosaur / the dinosaur  
sequence in Fantasia).
 
Of course, Disney fans all knew about those influences, but AFAIK, it had  
never been concretized that way, and I don't think it had been explored that  
deeply so far.
 
There are also lots of figurines animators used for shadows and 3d vision  of 
the characters (you get to see some of those in "The Reluctant Dragon), lots  
of beautiful studies and backgrounds from Disney movies (my favorite  ones 
were one from Pinocchio and another beautiful study of Sleeping Beauty's  house 
in the woods by Eyvind Earle). You can also see a scaled model of  Disneyland 
Paris' Sleeping Beauty Castle.
 
One of the things I really enjoyed watching was the projection of the  
Dali/Disney surreal project that was never finished, and which was re-made in  
digital animation in 2001, Destino, which is not even available on eMule (except  
if you're looking for bad quality porn), and which has only been shown in  
festivals, 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's  
even a few sketches by Dali himself which I really enjoyed (my favorite one is a 
 swan near a tree, and their reflect in water is an elephant, the swan'w neck 
 becomes the elephant's nose).
 
Then, the last room was dedicated to contemporary artists that were  
influenced, 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 been  
loving for years, "American Dream". I also loved Bertrand Lavier's work : he  
reproduced abstract canvas and sculptures seen in an old Mickey Mouse  comicbook 
gag!!! 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  could 
have choose his work instead...
 
As a conclusion I'd say that besides giving you that never before seen look  
at Disney's work, and overflow your heart with flashbacks from your childhood, 
 It really explains to people and especially artists that no matter how 
talented  you are, you can hardly produce something that imortally goes through 
times if  you don't have inspirations, and that culture is not something static, 
its  made of a superposition of layers communicating with eachother, a little 
bit  like cellos :-) Everything is linked.
 
That's too bad, I thought I would be able to see Interduck's Duckomenta as  
well, as it used to be not far of the Grand Palais, but it finished in the end  
of September... :-(
 
About the medias, there is indeed a DVD, with the great Arte program  related 
to the exhibition, a very complete book that costs about 45 euros if I  
recall well, and Olivier, you probably also want to get the Telerama hors série  
about it :-) It's also really good. In the Grand Palais shop you also have lots  
of books related to Disney and reeditions of old books Disney brought back 
from  his travels, such as "Le Roman du Renard"... 
 
The queue wasn't very long, but there was lots of people inside, including  
children, which was a bit annoying :-)
 
Gilles R. Maurice
_http://goofy313g.free.fr/calisota_online/_ 
(http://goofy313g.free.fr/calisota_online/) 
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