With the Saints in the news and now going to the Superbowl, all posts this week will just have to be about New Orleans in some way or another. Hey, not hard for me (previous posts on New Orleans).
The New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) is featuring an exhibit of conceptual art from Walt Disney’s animated films called,“Dreams Come True: Art of the Classic Fairy Tales from the Walt Disney Studio.” It includes 600 sketches and animation stills from select films dating back more than seven decades. There are several things that make this interesting to me and particularly if you like animation, which I do.
Hopefully, the Saints’ and their fans’ dreams will come true on Sunday.
1) This artwork is not on view publicly unless in an exhibit, according Lella Smith, the creative director of Disney’s Animation Research Library, in the Times Picayune article, “the only time fans get to see original Disney artworks is when the studio allows periodic museum exhibits.” I do remember seeing animated cell reproductions for sale in the Disney Studio at Walt Disney World but not the originals.
2) The drawings demonstrate the creative process from concept to what was actually used in the production, complete with multiple revisions and notations for camera cell-angles and close-ups. These drawings are mostly hand-drawn, remember, before technology took over.
3) Finally, my mother attended the opening ceremony and she wrote about it on my other blog, Slipcovers for Your Walls (casartblog). What made this interesting to us was the stair riser mural Walt Disney used in the the entrance way of the museum. Nice to know others are using this artistic concept, as Casart coverings is doing.
The exhibit is on view until March 14, 2010. If you’re visiting after Mardi Gras (February 16th), it might be something to see. NOMA and City Park have always been some of my favorite places to go in New Orleans. As a young girl, I used to stare at Bouguereau’s Whisperings of Love, “the Angel,” as I called it, for hours while visiting NOMA. I was always captivated by how he could get that incredible sense of soft, not hard-edged realism. Funny how decorative painters, as I came to find out, try to emulate Bouguereau’s painterly style.
Head over to Café Degas while you’re there. It’s nearby and magical.
On a side note, WordPress tells me I’ve now written over 300 posts. I wasn’t even counting but that sounds like more than I ever thought I would do. Thanks for tuning in, it makes it worthwhile.
