subject matter of Barks Paintings

[john garvin]

Dan Shane:
<Francesco hints at what I believe to be the root of the matter.  The
paintings are nice, but they don't mean anything without knowledge of
the
characters and the events.  In other words, the paintings are derived
from
the stories and cannot stand alone.  The wonderful comic tales, however,
can
easily endure without knowledge of the paintings.

I like Barks' oil work personally, and in my imaginary, perfect world, I

envision them as the "covers" to the comics I love.>

Barks went out of his way to make each painting stand on its own in
terms of its story telling content.  While it is certainly true that the
apprecitation of many paintings would be greatly enhanced by knowing
which story they were wrought from,  a great many of them require no
such knowledge.  "Sailing the Spanish Main," and most of the money bin
paintings, for instance, are not taken from stories at all, and are self
contained.  Even those paintings which are taken from a story, certainly
do not lean on the story for their power:

"Menace out of the Myths" for instance, is taken from a Barks story, but
I had not read the story when I first saw the painting, nor did I need
to.  The moodily rendered columns and crumbling ancient stairways set
the location.  The characters are frozen in time: caught in the act of
looting the fabulous treasure, their eyes glued to the frightful harpy
screeching overhead.  These elements interact with each other to tell a
simple story: ducks treasure hunting in crete get caught by a frightful
bird.  What makes the painting humorous (and most of Barks paintings
are) is that the "Menace" is not all that menacing: the harpy has a
maniacle expression and means business to be sure, but the manner in
which her fingers bend to match her bird-like claws, her goofy facial
features and double chin, her wild ponytail flipping abover her head,
and her two lonely little teeth peaking out from that huge nose, all
combine to make a somewhat less than frightening visage.  This
juxtaposition of the truly frightened ducks against the truly
un-frightening harpy creates humor.  The technical aspects of the
painting are also stunning:  The somber greyed tones of the realistic
stonework and columns contrast sharply with the ducks bright, cartoon
like, primary colors.  The figure placement draws our eye into and
around the frame, which is divided into thirds for balance: scrooge and
the boys, who create a single element, offset by Donald on the right and
the harpy in the upper right.  Almost all lines in the painting are
diagonals, pointing upwards directly at the harpy: Don's stick, Scrooges
beak, the box with gold coins, the stone blocks, the columnades,
focusing our eye on the "menace."  And the title itself, a pun on a
common pulp fiction phrase: menace out of the "mists."  Barks could
certainly count on the viewer at least knowing who the characters were:
Scrooge the world traveling, treasure seeking miser, Donald the
cantankerous, ne're do-well adventurer, the tag-a-long boys.  But I do
not think the viewer needs to know much more about the specifics of the
Barks cannon: the boys are not reading from their Junior Woodchucks
guidebook, for instance.  So even if the viewer had never heard of
Disney ducks at all, the painting holds up because it contains within
itself, all the elements it needs for someone to appreciate it.

So I disagree with Dan.  Most of the paintings do indeed stand on their
own.

And don't forget that a good deal of Barks best oil paintings have
nothing to do with the Disney universe at all.