Upon a Time: Walt Disney: The Sources of Inspiration for the Disney Studios
by: Girveau, Bruno

Hardcover. Prestel, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 353 pages. What makes the Disney Studio feature films produced between 1937 and 1967, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Alice in Wonderland, Pinocchio, and Fantasia, "masterpieces of animation"? One pivotal factor was reliance on an ardently assembled studio library of "iconographic sources." Art historian and curator Girveau and his contributors elucidate the tremendous influence European fables, fairy tales, illustrations, and paintings had on Walt Disney and his studio artists. Works by Heinrich Kley, Pieter Bruegel, Gustave Dore, Honore Daumier, Arthur Rackham, Lewis Carroll, and Beatrix Potter are juxtaposed with stills from the films, and, even more pleasingly, remarkably expressive preliminary drawings by such talented (and shrewdly well-trained) Disney artists as Mary Blair, Gustaf Tenggren, and Kay Nielsen. One intriguing chapter covers the short-lived collaboration between Disney and Salvador Dali in the mid-1940s, a project resurrected by Disney's nephew Roy, in 2003, while another showcases the use of Disney characters in pop art and contemporary works, thus bringing the exchange between high and low art full circle. This gorgeous and revealing volume deepens appreciation for Disney's brilliant, imaginative, and indelible creations. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.