Once Upon a Dream at the Cartoon Art Museum – Exhibition review by Kim Munson (November, 2009)

Production cel of the evil witch Malificent (animated by Mack Davis). Courtesy of the Cartoon Art Museum.

Once Upon a Dream: the Art of Sleeping Beauty -

Cartoon Art Museum, San Francisco (July 18, 2009 –

January 10, 2010).

This excellent exhibition at the Cartoon Art Museum

celebrates the 50th anniversary of the release of

Disney’s visual masterpiece Sleeping Beauty. On

display are concept paintings, model sheets, cels,

production drawings, color keys, photos and other ephemera that tell the story of the

making of Sleeping Beauty from design concept through the finished film. Sleeping

Beauty was a Disney milestone: a Technorama 70, 6-channel stereophonic vision of the

Perrault fairy tale that took over five years and $6 million to make. Stunning as it was

visually, the film cost so much to make that it lost money when it was released in 1959,

even though its box office take was only beaten by Oscar-winner Ben Hur. The film had

a comeback with the 1979 & 1986 reissues, when it finally took its place among the rest

of Disney’s classic (and money-making) films.

Unlike many Disney features, the visual style of Sleeping Beauty was driven primarily by

one man, supervising color stylist/inspirational sketch artist Eyvind Earle. Earle was a

painter and greeting card designer that was hired at Disney in 1951. Earle painted

backgrounds and concept paintings for shorts like The Little House and Toot, Whistle,

Plunk, and Boom and the features Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp. When Walt

Disney decided he wanted to do something with a completely unique look, he took a

chance on Earle, and gave him unprecedented control over the project.

Concept painting of Sleeping Beauty's castle by

Eyvind Earle, collection of Ron Dias. Courtesy of the

Cartoon Art Museum.

Earle created a “medieval tapestry”

inspired by the paintings of Durer, Van

Eyck, Breughel, and 15th century

French illuminated manuscripts,

especially the Tres Riches Heures de

Jean, Duc de Berri, as well as Persian

miniatures and Japanese art. Another

influence was the minimalist,

streamlined style of 1950’s graphic

design.

Many of Earle’s concept and background paintings are featured in this exhibit. I was

spellbound by the contrast of the stylized sharp angles, rich color palette, and dense

detail work. At one point in the exhibit, there is a concept drawing by Mary Blair for the

cover of a Sleeping Beauty storybook, and it’s interesting to contrast Blair's whimsical

style with Earle's, and imagine how different the film would have looked based on Blair’s

designs.

Many of the animators, which included the famous Nine Old Men and Production

Designer Ken Anderson, were concerned that the backgrounds were too cold for a

romantic comedy and that the detailed backgrounds would swallow the characters. This

struggle is mapped out in a series of model sheets and character concept sketches that

show the amount of work that went into finding character and costume designs that

would stand out against Earle’s grandiose backgrounds. Of particular interest in this

section of the exhibition were drawings of Princess Aurora, who was loosely based on

Audrey Hepburn. The princess presented special problems as she has only 18 minutes

of screen time to establish herself as the sympathetic heroine before she's fated to meet

up with that nasty spinning wheel and sleep through the rest of the film. On top of that,

she is living in the forest when the character is introduced, and is dressed in a muted

wardrobe that echoes the natural surroundings. The drawings show the character's

progression from forest maiden to a princess regally attired in blue or rose colored

gowns. Also of interest were different versions of the 3 good fairies, a photo sheet of

Maleficent’s two-horned “devil” headdress from every conceivable angle (the animators

had a really hard time drawing it), and photos of the "live cast" who acted out the

characters for the animators, enabling them to achieve more realistic movement in their

drawings.

Much of the work featured in this show is drawn from the collection of Ron Dias, a

Disney artist/illustrator whose first professional job in the animation industry was as an

in-betweener and clean-up animator on Sleeping Beauty. Dias went on to become one

of the most highly-regarded and sought-after background artists and color stylists in the

business. The exhibition includes a spotlight section with a selection of Dias’ own work,

such as background paintings and color concepts from The Secret of Nimh, Who

Framed Roger Rabbit, and The Little Mermaid.

This review will be published in the Spring 2010 edition of the International Journal of

Comic Art. See more reviews and news about comics and museums on my blog at

http://kmunson-mac.blogspot.com/