Tower vase with cover, Sèvres Manufactory, c. 1762 © Courtesy of the Huntington Art Museum, San Marino, California.
To coincide with the spellbinding exhibition at the Wallace Collection, Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts, curator Dr Helen Jacobsen explores the perhaps surprising connections between 20th century hand-drawn animation and Rococo culture.
Walt Disney, and the artists who worked for him, looked to 18th century France for inspiration, and a dialogue between these two seemingly disparate worlds reveals that they have much in common, from invention and creativity to wit and technological innovation.
Drawing on fairy stories and furniture, paintings and porcelain – as well as working drawings from the Disney archives - Helen reveals how pink elephants and talking sofas were not confined to characters in Disney films but were just as much part of the Salons of Rococo Paris. Although separated by two hundred years, both French craftsmen and Disney artists shared the same goal: to breath life into the inanimate.
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