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<DIV>I went to this exhibition last weekend, I've never seen such an
interresting and fresh look at Disney's work.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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...</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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... :-(</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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"... </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The queue wasn't very long, but there was lots of people inside, including
children, which was a bit annoying :-)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Gilles R. Maurice</DIV>
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