World of Disney

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World of Disney store
Fifth Avenue
New York, October 2007

“When critics write that Picasso was the most influential artist of the twentieth century, they forget Disney. His influence has operated at a number of levels for eighty years now, and one suspects it is only just beginning. That Disney was an artist is unquestionable, and part of the Modern Movement too, for the influence of Futurism on his early cartooning is obvious. A study of his Alice's Wonderland (1923) is instructive about his voracious artistic appetite and vocabulary. But Disney was a businessman of genius, and in his own way a moral force. Unlike Picasso, he was incapable of cynicism and his sincerity, like Della Robbia's, radiates from every line he drew. His masterpiece Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) is not only a highly inventive piece of animation but the Ur-document of a school which had branched out into over two hundred different systems of animated cartooning by the end of the century. Disney himself trained over a thousand artists, almost as many as the Académie Julian. Cartoons were the basis of most fashion art during the second half of the century and they also had a direct influence on clothes, interior decoration, furniture and architecture. Post-Modernism is part of Cartoon Land.” (Paul Johnson, Art: A New History)