Concept art for Beauty and the Beast
(Picture: Lucasfilm Ltd./Disney)So, what does Walt Disney’s film output have in common with Rococo, that most exquisitely mobile art form? Well, this exhibition sets out to prove that Disney and those 18th century artists and makers “both succeeded in animating the inanimate”. And, more broadly, both intended “to breathe life into objects, to entertain their public and to use new technologies to help achieve their aims.”
Certainly, Walt raided the dressing up boxes of Europe to good effect. He was an ambulance driver in France in 1918, based for a while at Versailles. He returned to Paris with his family in 1935 and later. He had a collection of French porcelain miniatures and bought fairy stories illustrated by Edmund Dulac and Felix Lorioux – making what we’d now call a mood board.
