Eleanor Audley posed for Wicked Stepmother, above, an early version of Snow White, top left, and Andreas Deja’s early work before he became a Disney animator, below left.
You don’t have to be an art expert to recognize just about every sketch on display in Arlington
DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
taffet@dallasvoice.com
The Arlington Museum of Art is coming to be known for its fun and surprising exhibits. Currently on display are 250 sketches and cels from Disney animation in Disney Art from Private Collections. The works are mainly from the collection of Disney animator Andreas Deja and include his work as well as that of Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston.
Usually when you go to a special exhibit — such as the Dallas Museum of Art’s recent Van Gogh show or one of the Kimball Art Museum’s Monet blockbusters — you go for the artist and are surprised and delighted to discover some works you’ve never seen before.
Here, you probably don’t know the artists, but you’ll recognize just about every sketch in the show.
But I actually even discovered a few sketches from Disney films I hadn’t heard of before.
And the museum is having a lot of fun with this exhibit that can only be seen in Arlington. Different downtown Arlington businesses are holding special Disney events in conjunction with the show.
HELP Center of Arlington, for example, held a Disney Drag Brunch.
Another thing that’s special about this show is that once it’s over, it won’t be traveling to venues across the country or around the world. This massive collection of sketches goes right back into Deja’s vault.
You may not know their names, but it was Johnston and Thomas who created the 12 principles of animation. While these fundamental ideas were developed in the 1930s — when it took 18 sketches turned into 18 layered cels to produce one second of animation — their concepts are still used today with computer animation and other technology.
The principles include things like timing and exaggeration: “Squash and stretch” alters the face to prevent stiffness of motion.
A good example can be seen in a series of 18 sketches hung side by side. These 18 were from a total of 54 that it took to animate three seconds of video of Jafar from Aladdin. Those three seconds run on continuous loop next to the sketches.
It’s fascinating seeing these pencil drawings come to life. Look closely at the faces from one sketch to the next and see how animators squashed portions of the faces and stretched them to bring them to life. There’s certainly nothing stiff about Jafar.
Often the animators used a live model to bring a character to life. The actress Eleanor Audley, best known for her role as Oliver Wendell Douglas’ mother on Green Acres, posed to become the basis for the Wicked Stepmother in Cinderella.
One room of the show is the “animal room.” While King Louie the orangutan from The Jungle Book or Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio are more fanciful, the leading dogs in The Lady and the Tramp are more realistic because the story is more sincere.
Deja wanted to be a Disney animator from the time he was a child. At 10, he wrote to Disney with samples of his work. So promising was his work already that Disney wrote back and advised him to practice drawing animals.
Some examples of Deja’s practice work as a teen are included in the exhibit. The sketches of lions aren’t from The Lion King, but certainly were very early versions of Mufasa and Simba.
The exhibit also illustrates how characters grow and develop. Some sketches of Snow White and the dwarfs don’t appear in the film because the characters changed appearance from early concepts. The original Snow White appeared to be much younger than the character in the film. The dwarves developed more personality as drawing proceeded.
The 80 years of Disney art represented includes some of the studio’s biggest films in addition to the ones mentioned above like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, 101 Dalmations and Peter Pan as well lesser known films like The Princess and the Frog, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad and Robin Hood.
I went to see the exhibit because I knew it would be fun. I knew it would be accessible and recognizable. I left having learned about an entire genre of art and the artists who developed it.
Disney Art from Private Collections runs through Sept. 4 at the Arlington Museum of Art, 201 W. Main St., Arlington. Adults $20, children $5 and ages 13-18 and seniors $15.
