Animation Artifacts 12 Sep 2006 08:49 am
Handouts
– Recently there’s been some attention given to an exhibition catalog from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, The Art of Disney. This catalog is a sizeable 242 pages and has been featured on a number of sites: Cartoon Brew, Mark Kennedy. It appears to have a number of pages taken from the 1958 Bob Thomas book, The Art of Animation.
Back in the good old days of the late 60′s – early 70′s, in New York, there were a number of appearances in which a group of Disney animation people would talk about the art. At Lincoln Center (discussed in a separate posting) Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Woolie Reitherman, Ken Anderson appeared. At MOMA to honor The Jungle Book, Gilda Radner introduced Eric Larsen and Ken Anderson. At SVA, John Lahr introduced Milt Kahl. There were others. To accompany these talks, there were often handouts.
At Lincoln Center, they gave us copies of a slick, stapled brochure sized truncation of the Bob Thomas book, The Art of Animation. His name as nowhere to be found on that booklet, but the stills and layout was the same as his tome. As a matter of fact, no names could be found in that booklet. Interestingly, that’s where they began selling the Christopher Finch book, The Art of Walt Disney.
It was nice to get something for free, though. It was colorful and attractive. Since I’d memorized the Thomas book, for some reason, I felt no need really to even look carefully through this item.
(Click on any image to enlarge.)
