Montreal Museum of Fine Arts offers an exclusive look at the animation genius's

JOHN GRIFFIN, The Gazette
Published: Wednesday, March 07, 2007

If you haven't darkened the doors of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts recently, you might want to consider it, say, between tomorrow and June 24. Take the kids.

The occasion is a exhibition-sized mouthful - Once Upon a Time Walt Disney: The Sources of Inspiration for the Disney Studios. But the show is a joy.

Fresh from its debut in Paris and making its only North American appearance, the collection includes about 500 never-before-seen pieces from the Disney vaults - from the days of Steamboat Willie, in 1928, to the year after Disney's death in 1966.

They include paintings, sculptures, drawings, film clips, maquettes, prints, books and - to welcome all at the entry - Mickey and Minnie Mouse, as modelled in 1930.

This wealth of archival material is augmented by many stunning examples of European art that inspired Disney's greatest animated feature work, from 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to 1967's The Jungle Book.

The show is rounded out with modern and contemporary art inspired by Disney, from Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg and others. The current corporate Disney of theme parks and Pixar animation is nowhere to be found.

The show's purpose, French curator Bruno Girveau said yesterday, is to position Disney as not only an iconic figure in popular culture, "but as one of the major artists of the 20th century."

"The exhibit shows the genesis of the art of Walt Disney," Girveau explained, bathed in bright sunshine under a cartoon-blue sky in the atrium of the museum's Jean-Noel Desmarais Pavilion, on a brutally cold morning.

"I hope after you see it, you, too, will be convinced that he and his collaborators were great artists."

For older fans, it takes only a walkabout of the 15,000-square-foot exhibition to be reminded of Disney's gift for elevating the humble animated short to a higher aesthetic plane, without diminishing its ability to entertain and transport the viewer into another world.

Gazing at drawings for Pinocchio, Bambi, Fantasia and Dumbo, one is struck by how interwoven they are into our experience of growing up, and by the insane amount of human labour that went into their creation.

"He revolutionized family entertainment in the 1930s," said Lella Smith, director of the Disney Animation Research Library in California. "He was convinced he could transform the genre from six-minute shorts with lots of sight gags to a fully formed feature film."

The exhibition unfolds in seven thematic sections, beginning at the beginning, with Mickey. It ends with a written Walt quote: "I only hope we don't lose sight of one thing - it was all started by a mouse."

In between, the show notes the impact of a 1935 Disney trip to Europe, and the influence of literary sources, classic illustrated books, German expressionism, architecture and design in his storytelling evolution.

A drawing of an aerial view of the village in Pinocchio hangs next to Return from the Inn, by Pieter Bruegel the Younger, circa 1620.

The anthropomorphic dogs in 1955's Lady and the Tramp are seen to have their origins in Landseer's famous Alexander and Diogenes, from 1848. Disney artist Tyrus Wong looked to John Everett Millais's Saint Martin's Summer, from 1878, for inspiration during the creation of 1942's Bambi.

As one further example of Disney's boundless curiosity, he collaborated with Salvador Dali on a project called Destino, in 1946. Though nothing came of it at the time, the 100 drawings and paintings Dali finished finally resulted in a six-minute film of that name, made by Disney Studios in 2003. It's in the show.

How much interest this catholic scholarship and sheer accumulation of material will generate in those few children who haven't been weaned on videos of Disney classics is hard to say. But the inclusion of so many unforgettable figures, the large-scale model of the castle from Sleeping Beauty, the film clips and the general air of Walt magic should appeal to kids of all ages.

Once Upon a Time Walt Disney: The Sources of Inspiration for the Disney Studios opens tomorrow and continues until June 24 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1380 Sherbrooke St. W. Open from Tuesdays to Sundays. Admission is $15, free for children 12 and under. The exhaustive 355-page catalogue, edited by Bruno Girveau, costs $54.95 and is available from the museum gift shop or the museum's website. For more information on the exhibition, call 514-285-2000 or visit www.mmfa.qc.ca.

jgriffin@thegazette.canwest.com

 

Re: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts offers an exclusive look at the animation geniu

Here is a Flickr photoset http://www.flickr.com/photos/comingupforair/sets/72157594573841867/ containing rare photos from the "Once upon a Time Walt Disney: The Sources of Inspiration for the Disney Studios" exhibit in Montreal that is about to open. I'm already drooling over some of the merchandise available in the museum's shop. Hopefully this will make a stop in the states at some point. Possibly in Orlando... pinging Meg Crofton. Make it happen. Please!

See the museum's website for exhibit and ticket information. (Thanks Andrew at PuppetVision Blog)

 

I'm looking forward to seeing this exhibit. CBC had a documentary on it in December and it looked really interesting. Right now the plan is to go in May.