Once Upon a Time Walt Disney 2
second part of 2-part review looks at artists who Disney inspired
Apr 23, 2007
Walt Disney has always had an uncomfortable relationship with the visual arts, as the second part of Once Upon a Time Walt Disney makes perfectly clear. In this half of the exhibition, Disney images veer from honoured high art to despised symbols of American cultural imperialism.
During the first half of the Twentieth Century, Disney's animated shorts and movies were as essential to hipster culture as jazz and Cubism. The studio's irreverent style and detailed work won them the support of art lovers, and the hatred of dictators like Adolf Hitler (on the other hand, Soviet thug Josef Stalin was a fan). Painter Salvador Dali even claimed that Walt Disney, director Cecil B. DeMille and the Marx Brothers were the "only American surrealists."
That state of affairs changed around 1940, when the studio was crippled by a bitter animators' strike. Walt Disney's forceful attempts to shut down union agitators alienated his hipster fanbase, who started deriding the studio as "The Mouse Factory" or "The Mouse House." Disney's subsequent support for Senator Joseph McCarthy, and his anti-Communist witch hunt, was the final nail in the coffin. Walt Disney Studios was now a pawn of The Man, and has been ever since.
Naturally, 1960's Pop artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol were drawn to Disney images. The entire notion of Pop art was a gigantic razzberry to 20th Century art critics like Clement Greenberg, who created a vast gulf between kitsch (artistic opium for the masses) and high art (abstract, expressionistic works that only appealed to a cultural elite). However, Pop art still had a ironic cast: Andy Warhol mocked his images of Mickey Mouse and Campbell's Soup even as he recast them as high art.
One of Warhol's Mickey Mouse paintings, which is essentially identical to his famous images of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, is prominently featured in the exhibition.
More recent artists have seized on Disney images to protest American imperialism and oppression. Artists from France's Narrative Figuration movement, such as Alain Jacquet, Hervé Télémaque, and Robert Combas attempt to reclaim these images, subverting them to serve their ends. By smudging the lines and deconstructing the images, these artists seek to rob them of their power to control. Other images of Mickey Mouse in the exhibit depict him flying an airplane, being swallowed by a matchstick head, and crucified on a cross. As Combas observed in 1977, “Mickey is no longer Walt’s property, he belongs to us all.”
Other artists play with the dark side of Disney as cultural imperialist. In Gottfried Helnwein's American Prayer, a little boy with wooden hands is depicted praying to a levitating Donald Duck, framed in a white glow. The boy's face is downcast; Donald's smirk towards the viewer, coupled with his jaunty stance, imply that he has no intention of answering the child's prayer, even if he had the ability to do so.
Artist Jean-Michel Pradel-Fraysse abandons any sort of subtlety for his piece Rat. A square of marble shows a parody of Walt Disney's distinctive signature in the middle, spelling the word "Rat." The signature is filled in with gold leaf.
Surprisingly, Once Upon a Time Walt Disney doesn't show any works by New York guerrilla artist Ron English, who has used images of Mickey Mouse (often depicted with Paul Stanley's KISS makeup) many times. English, who filmmaker Morgan Spurlock called "an artistic genius," had several of his paintings featured in Spurlock's 2003 documentary Super Size Me.
This part of Once Upon a Time Walt Disney has a very European flavour, and its interesting to see how people from outside North America view these iconic figures. The exhibit isn't for the unquestioning Disney fan, and it may be too strong for children (which is why it's tucked into the museum basement), but for those who love both Disney and high art, it's invaluable, but flawed viewing.
Once Upon a Time Walt Disney runs at the Montreal Museum of Fine Art until June 24th.
