Fantasia

On November 13, 1940, just short of 71 years ago, was first displayed what I'm sure will be considered for centuries to come, as one of the greatest works of art of the twentieth century. It would rank right up there with Picasso's Guernica, Monet's water lilies, Rockwell's Four Freedoms and Wright's Guggenheim. And at a cost in the neighborhood of $2 million to create, notwithstanding the cost of Wright's masterpiece, for its time, it ranked as perhaps the most expensive work of art ever created (certainly the most expensive painted work of art). The artist, with the help of hundreds of assistants, worked for two and a half years to create it though in fact, he never actually drew one line or painted a single stroke. His contribution was inspirational and conceptual rather than physical. His name was Walter Elias Disney, his masterpiece was called Fantasia. And never before or since has music and painting been so exquisitely matched in such a way that one compliments and expounds upon the other.  In a very real sense, Disney invented a whole new type of painting.

Fantasia poster, 1940

Flushed with more than $6 million in profits from "Snow White," Walt Disney was troubled by the lack of respect his new art medium was given both in the world of Hollywood as well as the broader art world in general. Even with a feature film under his belt, his work was seen as little more than animated comic strips. And as groundbreaking as Snow White had been, even he realized he was merely "toying" with a serious new art form.  Fantasia was his attempt to rise above "Mickey Mouse" cartoon shorts or merely illustrating moving picture books for children. Classical music such as came from Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, or Bach was serious stuff. It would give "class" to any animated images associated with it, especially if he and his artists could meld the two arts into a single, symbiotic relationship--even if the star of the picture was still Mickey Mouse. In doing so, he moved the art and science of both sound and animation forward in quantum leaps. Never before had recorded sound seemed so real or animated art been so expressive.

Fantasia 2000 poster, 2000

A mere dozen years after the debut of Mickey in Steamboat Willy, at the Broadway Theater in New York, Fantasia was unveiled at the same venue. The reviews were uneven. Some saw it for the masterful synthesis of animated painting and music it was. In general, music critics were less kind. They were profoundly impressed by the quality of sound reproduction Disney's Fantasound presented but disturbed that anyone should find it necessary to add pictures (especially cartoons) to such expressive musical works. They saw it as cheapening classical music. This Disney and his bankers could live with, but the fact that the public found it to be so far from what they'd come to expect from Disney--that really hurt. On its initial release, it made back less than one-forth it's cost. Financially, Fantasia was a victim too of W.W.II, in that with the world at war, fully 45% of Disney's revenue (from foreign release) also went down the tubes. Eventually, in re-release, the film made money, spectacular money, in fact, when, in the 1960s, the psychedelic crowd adopted it as one of their own.  Today, Fantasia earns for Disney Studios more than its $2 million cost per year. And finally, as Walt had hoped all along, there came a sequel.  From the beginning, he saw Fantasia as an ever-evolving work in progress. On December 17, 1999 an evolved Fantasia 2000 opened to the public, not at a traditional movie theater but at New York's Carnegie Hall, then in 183 IMAX theaters in some 25 countries around the world.

(Note: I do not own any Disney stock.  Wish I did.)

Antonio Parreiras

One canvas yields two paintings, Captain Dias Adorno (lower left), 1933,
and The Invaders (upper right), 1936. Notice the color differences in the two.

If only there weren't so many countries in this world I might be able to get my feeble mind (which grows feebler every day) around each country's great artists. Every few weeks I come upon an artist, considered the greatest, or one of the greatest, artists of some country only to be faced with the realization that I've never heard of the guy before (few, if any, are women). In Europe, that's not so amazing as there are several smaller countries, each having a long history of artistic achievement with several outstanding artists down through the centuries. However, many of the countries in the western hemisphere have comparatively short Post-Columbian art histories. Moreover, just because I, and most other people, can't name the greatest artist to ever emerge from Bolivia (for example) assuming we could agree on a single name, doesn't make that artist or that country's art any less important than that of any other country in the world. It's simply indicative of that country's obscurity and our indifference (or ignorance). Brazil is another example. Could you name that country's greatest artist? I couldn't have, until today. His name was Antonio Parreiras.


My First Oil Painting, 1883, Antonio Parreiras

Antonio Parreiras, probably
a self-portrait, ca. 1890.

Whenever one talks in terms of superlatives having to do with artists from the past there is the implied additive "...of his (or her) time." Antonio Parreiras was born in 1860, one of nine children of a goldsmith, so naturally we're talking about "his time" being roughly the period 1880 until his death in 1937. Interestingly, that period also coincides with the rule of Brazil's Emperor Pedro II (who ruled from 1831 to 1925), a period of political stability, social justice, economic growth, and relative prosperity for the country (as compared to most of South America). I mention this for two reasons. The conditions listed above are necessary prerequisites for a flowering of the arts in any culture. There's also the incidental fact that Pedro II purchased one of Parreiras' paintings in 1886, for a sum sufficient to allow the twenty-six-year-old art student to travel to Italy where he enrolled in the Art Academy of Venice. He studied there for two years. Exposure to European art, artists, and academic instruction was extremely important for a painter who, up until that time, was mostly self-taught.

Beach Corner, 1886, Antonio Parreiras

The Windstorm, 1888,
Antonio Parreiras

Upon returning to Brazil, Parreiras participated in the "Exposição Gerais de Belas Artes". Later he became a Professor of landscape painting at the National School of Fine Arts where he introduced his students to plein-air painting. His Beach Corner (above) from 1886, is an excellent example of European influence imposed upon a South American scene. It would be safe to say Parreiras painted impressionistically after his return from Italy, though referring to him as an impressionist is something of a judgment call. Parreiras' Windstorm (left) from 1888, is probably his most famous and oft-reproduced paintings. As one of the few Brazilian artists trained in Europe, and with several medals to his name, from around 1900, Parreiras began receiving commissions for history paintings. His 1907 Conquest of the Amazon (below) is typical of several such works completed during the first decades of the 20th-century when he also found his talents in demand in decorating newly built public buildings. A history painter painting impressionistically was something of a peculiar combination, even for Europe.

The Conquest of the Amazon, 1907, Antonio Parreiras

Antonio Parreiras, ca. 1925

During the 1920s, Parreiras' popularity was such that he maintained studios in both Rio de Janeiro as well as Paris, where he both taught and painted some of his larger, history painting canvases such as his The Invaders (top). He seems to have struggled some with the composition. Eventually it evolved into two smaller works, Captain Dias Adorno, from 1933, and The Invaders, from 1936, the latter of which appears to have been much altered from its original incarnation. It was also likely one of Parreiras' final paintings. He died the following year at the age of seventy-six.

The End of Romance, 1912, Antonio Parreiras

The Wicker Worker, 1927,
Antonio Parreiras

It's in Parreiras' paintings from late in his career that we see the most variety and expressive content. His The End of Romance (above) dating from 1912, is by no means the first handling of such sentimental content (though undoubtedly a first for Brazilian art). The theme had been a recurring one in European painting for years, though the pistol in the man's hand suggests suicide rather than combat. His Wicker Worker (left) from 1927 would seem to indicate an interest late in life for the indigenous people, arts, and crafts of his homeland. Though usually classed as a landscape painter, it was only during the latter years that he found the time to concentrate exclusively on such work. His Iguazu Falls (below), from 1920, is indicative of his renewed interest in the Brazilian landscape. His Fantasia (bottom) from 1909, combines the two, an interest in the work of Brazilian artists, as well as in the female landscape.

Iguazu Falls, 1920, Antonio Parreiras

Fantasia, 1909, Antonio Parreiras

 

Mouse Art

Painting Dinner, Lucia Heffernan

As I was editing the photos for this post, my wife passed by and asked, "Is that the best you can come up with to write on?" My wife hates mice. Most women do. It's not that she would hop up on a chair screaming "EEEEEKKK" as usually depicted in so many stereotypic cartoons. It's just the holes they make in food packaging in the pantry and the nibbling which comes as a result. I tried to explain that she should not be so upset, they are, after all, very small creatures and not likely to eat very much. She was notamused. Despite the painting above titled, Painting Dinner, by Lucia Heffernan, I'm not writing about mice who paint. However, I was surprised to realize the number of artists who paint mice. And, like legions of others who specialize in depicting animal art which I've covered, the range of styles, media, and techniques pretty much runs the gamut from Photorealism to Abstract Expressionism. Incidentally, I also noticed, counterintuitively, that female artists, (despite the stereotype) tend to paint mice more often than their male counterparts. I wonder how much they pay their models?

 

The Three Blind Mice (upper image) as originally depicted by Charles Folkard,
have come a long way as seen by the contemporary image just above.

In 1609, the famous children’s rhyme “Three Blind Mice” was published in London. The mice have since been featured in multiple cinematic movies and television shows throughout the year, one of the most famous being Shrek. The origin of the nursery rhyme has a somewhat disturbing story behind it. The three blind mice were three Protestant loyalists who were accused of plotting against Queen Mary I. The farmer’s wife refers to the queen who, along with her husband, King Philip of Spain, owned several large estates. Mice were no doubt a recurring problem. The three men were eventually burned at the stake.

 

Gypsy Mice, David Galchutt

There seems to be no written history of "mouse art" (not surprising, I guess). From "Three Blind Mice," on it's hard to say how much "mouse art" (if any) was created. In most of the images I could find from later centuries, the mice were forced to shared the spotlight with playful cats or kittens. California illustrator, David Galchutt's Gypsy Mice (above), though seeming to be from the 19th-century was actually painted quite recently. It wasn't until 1904 that British writer, Beatrix Potter once more popularized mice as a fitting subject for artists. That was the year in which her children's storybook The Tale Of Two Bad Mice, was published in England. The Mice Hear Simpkin Outside (below) underscores her talent as an illustrator as well as being a writer, natural scientist, and conservationist. From that point on, mice have become a staple of children's literature and fine art.

 

The Mice Hear Simpkin Outside, 1905, Beatrix Potter 

There were probably other notable mice during the intervening years, but in 1928 Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks first brought a lovable little mouse they called Mortimer to the silver screen in Steamboat Willie (bottom). It was one of the first animated cartoon to feature a soundtrack. Mortimer was an anthropomorphic mouse who typically wore red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves, (later renamed Mickey Mouse). Mickey made his movie debut in a Disney short cartoon titled Plane Crazy, only later hitting his stride as Steamboat Willie. Since then, Mickey has gone on to star in over 130 films, including The Band Concert (1935), Brave Little Tailor (1938), and Fantasia in 1940. Mickey appeared primarily in short films, but also occasionally in feature-length films. Ten of Mickey's cartoons have been nominated for the Academy Awards as Best Animated Short Film, one of which, Lend a Paw, won the award in 1942. In 1978, Mickey became the first cartoon character to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

 

The most successful mouse of all time.

Mickey Mouse was not the only cute little rodent to "make it" as a movie star. After 1942, Paul Terry's Super Mouse made his film debut in a cartoon short titled The Mouse of Tomorrow. Like Mickey and hundreds of other Hollywood movie stars, once he became famous he changed his name. Super Mouse became Mighty Mouse. The character was conceived originally by Paul Terry. Created as a parody of Superman, he was renamed Mighty Mouse for The Wreck of the Hesperus (1944), after Paul Terry learned that another character named "Super Mouse" was to be published by Standard Comics. Mighty Mouse subsequently starred in 80 theatrical films between 1942 and 1961. These films appeared on American television from 1955 through 1967, every Saturday morning on the CBS television network. The character was twice revived, by Filmation Studios in 1979 and in 1987 by animation director Ralph Bakshi, who had worked at the Terrytoons studio during his early career. Mighty Mouse's superpowers included flight, super strength, and invulnerability. In some films he used X-ray vision and psychokinesis. He was also able to turn back time in The Johnstown Flood. Other cartoons showed him leaving a red contrail during flight that he manipulated like a band of solid, flexible matter, as in Krakatoa for example .

 

Paul Terry's Mighty Mouse. After 1945, dialog in many of his films
was sung by opera singers.

It's hard to say precisely how much Beatrix Potter, Walt Disney, and Paul Terry have had to do with the popularity of mice as subjects for other artists' creative efforts. About the time white mice became test creatures in scientific laboratories, they also became docile house pets, even for small children, and were therefore readily available as photographic models which then led to paintings such as the aptly named White Mouse (below) from Lydia's Wildlife Studio.

 

White Mouse, Lydia's Wildlife

At the same time, other artists have chosen the common field mouse as seen in Snack From the Garden, (below) by Jai Johnson.

 

Snack From the Garden, Jai Johnson

Other mouse painters have found the shy little creatures as an outlet for their more whimsical tendencies as seen in Soouris No. 15, (below) by Marina Dieul.

 

Soouris No. 15, Marina Dieul

Copyright, Jim Lane

This is the point at which I usually display one of my own mouse paintings. That's good since I have only one example, which I called Tom and Jerry (inspired yet another cartoon). It dates from my college days back in 1970.

 

 

 

 

 

Tom and Jerry, 1970,

Jim Lane



Living dangerously,
A Cat Peeping Through a Fence,
1966, Cornelis Saftleve

 

Mickey (Mortimer) Mouse makes his film debut as Steamboat Willie (1928)

Edward D. Wood Jr.

Some of the worst films ever made--most written, directed, and produced by Ed Wood.
He even took on a starring role in one of them.

As a public school art instructor I considered the cinematic arts to be on a par with painting, drawing, art history, sculpture, and other creative art forms. Of course costs made it impossible to give students hands-on moviemaking experience, but like a course in literature, we studied the classics as appropriate to the ages of the students involved. Those included Gone With The Wind, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ben-Hur, Bridge on the River Kwai, Fantasia, and a number of others too numerous to mention. Over the years, using this format, I've tended to concentrate on some of the greatest names in the film industry such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Wells, Walt Disney, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick, David O. Selznick, Martin Scorsese, and again, a number of others too numerous to mention. Though quite varied in their talents and approaches to filmmaking, they were the best Hollywood has had to offer. Today, as a change of pace, let me highlight a man considered by virtually everyone in the business as the worst filmmaker in cinematic history--Ed Wood.

 



The resemblance is uncanny, but that's about all the two men ever shared in common.



If you've never heard of Ed Wood until now, believe me, you ain't missed much. And even if you are familiar with the work of Edward D. Wood, it's likely due to Tim Burton's sympathetic 1994 biopic starring a very close lookalike, Johnny Depp. The film received two Academy Awards. Ed Wood was an American filmmaker, actor, and author. In the 1950s, Wood directed several low-budget science fiction, crime and horror films, notably Glen or Glenda, Jail Bait, Bride of the Monster, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Night of the Ghouls and The Sinister Urge. In the 1960s and 1970s, he transitioned towards sexploitation and pornographic films, while also writing over eighty pulp crime, horror, and sex novels. Notable for their campy aesthetics, technical errors, unsophisticated special effects, ill-fitting stock footage, eccentric casts, idiosyncratic stories and non sequitur dialogue, Wood's films remained largely obscure until he was posthumously awarded a Golden Turkey Award for Worst Director of All Time in 1980, renewing public interest in his life and work.

 



Wood proved to be no better as
an actor than as a writer,
producer, or director.

Edward D. Wood Jr. might be termed the Will Rogers of filmmaking: He never directed a shot he didn't like. It takes a special weird genius to be voted the Worst Director of All Time, a title that Wood has earned by acclamation. He was so in love with every frame of every scene of every film he shot that he was blind to hilarious blunders, stumbling ineptitude, and acting so bad that it achieved a kind of grandeur. But badness alone would not have been enough to make him a legend; it was his love of film, sneaking through, that pushes him over the top. Wood's most famous films are Plan 9 from Outer Space (during which his star, Bela Lugosi, died and was replaced by a double with a cloak pulled over his face), and "Glen or Glenda" (left), in which Wood himself played the transvestite title roles. It was widely known even at the time that Wood himself was an enthusiastic transvestite,

 

Hacks are nothing new in Hollywood. Since the beginning of the film industry at the turn of the 20th century, thousands of untalented people have come to Los Angeles from all over America and abroad to try to make it big (as writers, producers, directors, actors, talent agents, singers, composers, musicians, artists, etc.) but who end up using, scamming and exploiting other people for money as well as using their creative ability (either self-taught or professional training), leading to the production of dull, bland, mediocre, unimaginative, inferior, trite work in the forlorn hope of attaining commercial success.

 

The climactic scene from Plan 9 from Outer Space.
The big man in the middle is Tor Johnson whom Wood used often in his films

Ed Wood as Glenda

Wood was an exceedingly complex person. He was born in 1924, in Poughkeepsie, NY, where he lived most of his childhood. He joined the US Marine Corps in 1943 at the height of World War II and was, by all accounts, an exemplary soldier, wounded in ferocious combat in the Pacific theater. He was habitually optimistic, even in the face of the bleak realities that would later consume him. His personality bonded him with a small clique of outcasts who eked out life on the far edges of the Hollywood fringe. After settling in Los Angeles in the late 1940s, Wood attempted to break into the film industry, initially without success, but in 1952 he landed the chance to direct a film based on the real-life Christine Jorgensen sex-change story, then a hot topic. The result, Glen or Glenda (above, right), gave a fascinating insight into Wood's own personality and shed light on his transvestism (an almost unthinkable subject for an early 1950s mainstream feature). Although devoutly heterosexual, Wood was an enthusiastic cross-dresser, with a particular fond-ness for angora. Moreover the film revealed the almost complete lack of talent that would mar all his subsequent films, his tendency to resort to stock footage of lightning during dramatic moments, laughable set design, and a near-incomprehensible performance by Bela Lugosi as a mad doctor whose presence is never adequately explained. The film deservedly flopped miserably but Wood, always upbeat, pressed ahead.


Some might consider Wood's sci-fi epic as being so bad it's good. It rates as a cult classic right up (down there with the 1960s smashed hit, The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

Wood's 1955 film starring Bella Lugosi, Bride of the Monster (below), unbelievably, somehow managed to earn a small profit during its original release, undoubtedly more of a testament to how cheaply it was produced than its value as entertainment), and Wood only shot a few seconds of silent footage of Lugosi (doped and dazed, wandering around the front yard of his house) for "Plan 9" just days before the actor died in August 1956. What few reviews the film received were brutal. Typically undaunted, Wood soldiered on despite incoherent material and a microscopic budget, peopling it with his regular band of mostly inept actors. Given the level of dialog, budget and Wood's dismal directorial abilities, it's unlikely that better actors would have made much of a difference (lead actor Gregory Walcott made his debut in this film and went on to have a very respectable career as a character actor, but he was always embarrassed by his participation in this film)--in fact, it's the film's semi-official status as arguably the Worst Film Ever Made that gives it its substantial cult following. The film, financed by a local Baptist congregation led by Wood's landlord, reaches a plateau of ineptitude that tends to leave viewers open-mouthed, wondering what is it they just saw. "Plan 9" became, whether Wood realized it or not, his singular enduring legacy. Ironically, the rights to the film were retained by the church and it is unlikely that Wood ever received a dime from it. His epic bombed upon release in 1959 and remained largely forgotten for years to come.

The poster was far better than the movie.

Wood's main problem was that he saw himself as a producer-writer-director, when in fact he was spectacularly incompetent in all three capacities. Friends who knew Wood have described him as an eccentric, oddball hack who was far more interested in the work required in cobbling a film project together than in ever learning the craft of film making itself or in any type of realism. In an alternate universe, Wood might have been a competent producer if he had better industry connections and an even remotely competent director. Wood, however, likened himself to his idol, Orson Welles, and became a triple threat: bad producer, poor screenwriter, and God-awful director. All of his films exhibit illogical continuity, bizarre narratives, and give the distinct impression that a director's job was simply to expose the least amount of film possible due to crushing budget constraints. His 1959 magnum opus, Plan 9 from Outer Space features visible wires connected to pie-pan UFOs, actors knocking over cardboard "headstones", cars changing models and years during chase sequences, scenes exhibiting a disturbing lack of handgun safety and the ingenious use of shower curtains in airplane cockpits that have virtually no equipment are just a few of the trademarks of that Edward D. Wood Jr. production (as seen in the video clip at the bottom). When criticized for their innumerable flaws, Wood would cheerfully explain his interpretation of the suspension of disbelief. It's not so much that he made movies so badly without regard to realism--the amazing part is that he managed to get them made at all.



Check out the full-length movie It Came from Hollywood on YouTube for more of the worst Hollywood has had to offer.

 

1990s Art

The 1990s--the birth of GIF art, though the X-Men,
created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, date from the 1960s.

It seems hard to believe now, but the art of the 1990s goes back as much as 27 years ago. My, how time flies when you're having fun...or, as Kermit the Frog once said "Time's fun when you're having flies" Speaking of time, Kermit is now old enough for Social Security (62). For me, the 1990s were memorable in that it was the decade which brought us the home computer. We got our first one in 1995 (below). It was a Packard Bell Legend 814CD with a 100MHz Pentium Processor, 8MB, of memory, a 1.2GB 4x NEC CD-ROM Drive, and two Floppy Drives (5.25 disk and the "new" 3.5 disk). Notice, it did not contain a modem. Though the Internet had been around since 1969, dial-up access in the 1990s was both slow and expensive (CompuServe was five cents per minute). I think we paid about $700 for the computer, monitor, and accompanying software (about $1,100 today).

It was not very artist friendly.

Despite a whole bucket of bugs and numerous limitations, digital art began to take hold as the decade progressed. Computers grew friendlier and more powerful by leaps and bounds. Apple prodded Microsoft to forego MS-DOS in favor of Windows, which progressed from 3.1 to Windows 95, Windows 98, and finally, in 2000, Windows ME (Millennial Edition). Some of those operating systems are still in use today. With each new permutation came radical improvements in the capabilities for producing digital art, either from photos or from the "scratch" of the artist's imagination.

Fractal Art--beautiful, but the computer does all the work.

As might be expected, older artists turned technophobic while Millennials embraced the digital revolution. Nerds ruled, and their favored art was fractal, based upon mathematic algorithms ideal for even the relative low-power processors of the day (above). Among the artist who embraced fractal art were Desmond Paul Henry, Hamid Naderi Yeganeh and musician Bruno Degazio. Fractal art is not simply computerized art, lacking in rules, unpredictable, nor something that any person with access to a computer can do well. Instead, fractal art is expressive, creative, and requires input, effort, and intelligence.

Bob Ross, the mighty painter of friendly little trees retired in 1994 after a TV run of seven years.

The Bob Ross Dress

It would be false to relegate an entire decade of art to that which accompanied the advent of low-cost computers and their software. Although painting was starting to decline as a viable form of creative communication, its multi-media challengers, TV, motion pictures, and in its nascent form, digital art, were waiting in the wings. TV had its Bob Ross and Ben Alexander, both of whom retired in 1994. CGI-technology, made its debut in films such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Jurassic Park, Forrest Gump, Independence Day, and Titanic. Disney con-tributed the first totally computer animated feature length film, Toy Story in 1995. This they followed with such forgettable epics as Hercules, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and finally Fantasia 2000 (all of which lost money).

Plus dozens of sequels, prequels, and horror films
enough to fill (and sink) the Titanic.

I'm confident there must have been some, but in perusing hundreds of traditional paintings on canvas from the 1990s I didn't recognize a single one as being memorable. That means that few, if any, such work has left a lasting impression on the world of art. In a Postmodern world paintings on canvas are so, for lack of a better term, "modern." That's not to say that artists from other decades didn't continue to produce. They did, but their art had changed little, if at all, from that which the produced decades before which made them famous. So, inasmuch as my own work would seem to be as memorable as any other produced in the 1990s, I'm including Tantalizing (below) dating from 1998 as being representative of the painters art from that era.

Copyright, Jim Lane

Tantalizing, 1998, Jim Lane

The typical American family
of the 1990s.









































 

Disney's Greatest Masterpiece

Walt Disney proudly displays for TV Peter Ellenshaw's 1954 concept map of Disneyland.

A couple years ago about this time I wrote a piece on "The Most Successful Artist of All Time" (07-26-11). I discussed the man, his career, his cartoons, his movies and a few months later, his groundbreaking 1940-41 Fantasia (10-14-11). What I failed to mention was Walter Elias Disney's greatest masterpiece. If someone asked you, "How would you like to be in a movie?" Your reaction might be, "what do I have to do, look up in the sky at an NSA spy satellite and wave?" Flippancy aside, beginning in 1955, all you had to do was visit Disneyland. Long before Universal Studios turned their back lot into an amusement park, Walt Disney and his moviemaking geniuses created a huge movie set where all you needed was an 8mm Kodak "Brownie" movie camera and the one-dollar price of admission to, in effect, star in your own Hollywood (Anaheim, actually) production. (No, that's not a typo, the original Disneyland admission price really was one dollar bill, though each of Disney's other four "lands" was a separate one-dollar ticket.)

 



Disneyland literally had its roots in Walt's backyard (and his wife's flowerbeds). A friend's miniature locomotive (above) spawned a Disney-built 1/2 scale model for his own backyard amusement in 1950. He spent $50,000, for what was to be the
forerunner to that which, even today, encircles Disney parks.

As with virtually every artistic masterpiece, this one grew and evolved. Disney's greatest achievement started with an idea for an eight-acre recreation area for company employees and their families across the street from Disney Studios in Burbank. Disney's greatest talent was that of dreamer. When you have a good idea you run with it. The company recreation area grew into Mickey Mouse Park, and then gradually, over a period of ten years following WW II, into 160 acres of "fun and games" for children and adults alike--the first modern day amusement park. This long gestation period, along with the budding era of television, and Disney's own showmanship and enthusiasm, were the critical ingredients in the park's immediate success.

 

How Disneyland grew, this map dates from the late 1940s--16 acres on the
banks of the Los Angeles River. The project got strangled in red tape.

Disneyland did not pop out of its creator's head in a "eureka" moment of visual clarity. Disney recalled his father having worked at the Great Chicago World's Fair in 1893, his visits with his daughters to Griffith Park in Los Angeles, Tivoli Gardens in Denmark, as well as similar sites in the Netherlands, and the United States. His own small-town memories became Main Street, USA. His boyhood fascination with the frontier West, and an optimistic outlook on the future contributed to two of the "little" amusement parks within the BIG amusement park. His company's ventures into wildlife films and, of course, their mainstay, wholesome children's cartoons, rounded out the four Disney themed neighborhoods.

 

There were still a lot of orange groves and farmhouses as late as May, 1955 as Disney rushed his brainchild toward an opening date of July 17th.

As important as the inspiration for his masterpiece may have been, it was Disney's (along with brother, Roy's) mastery of corporate management and finance, which made it happen. Disney Studios was, by the early 1950s, no fly-by-night animation sweatshop, but neither was it a major Hollywood player with untold millions to cast about. Snow White, their first feature film, had nearly bankrupted the company, an experience Disney did not soon forget. Though heavily invested, (both personally and through the studio) Disney did not "bet the ranch" in bringing his artistic masterpiece to life. As with every great entrepreneur, he used OPM (other people's money). He and Roy had to sell the idea to Western Publishing and other media firms. It was a "hard sell, for Disney had neither a track record nor a bevy of other wealthy investors beating down the door to Sleeping Beauty's (proposed) castle. What he did have was a contract with the ABC TV network for a weekly, hour-long, showcase of old and new film footage. This quickly became a sparkling stage for each new bright idea as Disneyland came closer and closer to reality.

 

The Disneyland centerpiece, opening day--101 in the shade and no drinking water.

What was more than 100 acres of orange and walnut trees in early 1954, became the Magic Kingdom just over a year later. Disney unveiled his masterpiece on Sunday, July 17th, 1955, exactly one year after construction had begun. The day was a disaster. The drinking fountains didn't work. The temperature was a balmy 101 degrees, TV technical snafus mounted into a comedy of errors, traffic jams delayed guest celebrities, while newly laid asphalt (from the day before) made walking in 1950s era high heels an experience akin to leaving ones footprints in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater (a nice Hollywood touch unless you were a mother herding a 1950s era family of 3.5 baby booming kids).

 

Moving mountains (note the Matterhorn in the background),
not to mention thousands of orange trees.

Perhaps the truest mark of a creative masterpiece lies in the works of those it influences. Following Disney's lead, other movie companies jumped in. Universal's studio tours grew to encompass back lot thrill rides, while MGM moved to Las Vegas and set up an adult version of Disneyland with its Grand hotel and casino. Sea World, Anheuser Busch, and Six Flags copied and adapted the Disney model in their own ways. And of course, in the grand Hollywood tradition, Disney itself created a huge, blockbusting sequel among the orange groves of central Florida. In more recent years, the Disney sequels have been translated into foreign languages, French, Japanese, and Hong Kong Chinese, with more sure to come as the spirit of Walt Disney ventures into its real life corporate Tomorrowland.

Disneyland Hong Kong suggests a Disney Tomorrowland filled with parks, hotels, monorails, space travel, as well as floating versions featuring all of the above.

 

Paula Rego

Paula Rego Self-portrait

Although I try, goodness knows I try, I'm sure I don't write about female artists as often as their numbers or work would justify. More than that, I don't write about Portuguese artists as often as I should either. Okay, I've never written about a Portuguese artist, much less a female Portuguese artist...mea culpa. Paula Rego is worth writing home about. She's quite the unique individual. Try to imagine an artist whose influences are as diverse as Walt Disney and Dante's Inferno. Maybe Disney should do an animated feature on Dante. They wouldn't have to look far to fine a lead artist. Rego's work is often compared to illustration perhaps because of her Disney affections. She has a body of work covering such classics as Peter Pan, Pinocchio, Snow White, and the ostrich ballerinas from Fantasia. Her father owned Portugal's first private cinema. It was there she "cut her teeth" on such Disney fare. But let me warn you, before you go searching through the archives, don't expect anything even faintly resembling the "Disney style." It's an affection, not an affectation. For this, look instead to the ancient illustrations of Dante's Inferno, another of her father's favorites. Bedtime stories from The Inferno?

Snow White Playing with Her Father's Trophies,
1995, Paula Rego

The Disney connection is but a small part of her work. Rego's art is an excellent example of the difference between abstract and nonrepresentational work. Though she comes close at times, like Picasso, she never steps over the line. Though she never mentions the work of her Iberian neighbor, there are similarities between her work and his early, Pre-Cubist painting. At times there can be found the Fauvist look of Matisse as well. But also, there is a sketchy, etchy, illustrative, almost comic strip quality to some of her art. There is little doubt in looking at any of it that its artist is a woman. A female point of view permeates both the content and attitude, and if she's nothing else, she is a woman with an attitude. She's outspoken, very literate, opinionated, and blunt.

Girl and Dog Series, early 1990s,
Paul Rego

Paula Rego had her first commercial success in England through the Marlborough Galleries with her Girl and Dog series (left).  Later, her Maids series based upon Jean Genet's play in which the maids murder their mistress, was spread in limited edition prints around the world. In a typically female manner, nowhere in her biographical material could I find mention of her age or date of birth, though I think I recall seeing somewhere the year 1935. Her husband, Vic, was a tremendous influence on both her life and work. His death in 1988 she recounted in her Departures (below) series. Her media ranges from pen and ink washes to traditional oil on canvas. It wouldn't be going to far, I don't think, to call Paula Rego Portugal's most famous female artist...okay perhaps we might even leave out the female part.  But it can never be left out of her work.

Paula Rego with her Departure Series, 1990

Casa das Historia Paula Rego, Cascais, near Lisbon ,Portugal, her own museum.