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Fascinating article in the March 2010 issue of VANITY FAIR revealing the true story of the army of young women who inked and painted all the animation of DISNEY’s Golden Age:

COLORING THE KINGDOM
By Patricia Zohn | Vanity Fair
Behind the breakthrough magic of Walt Disney’s first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and his other 30s and 40s classics—Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi—toiled as many as 100 young women, the inkers and painters, working from dawn to dusk on thousands of cels that brought his dreams to life. The author recaptures their white-gloved esprit de corps, and a golden age of Disney that would be disrupted by strike, World War II, and, eventually, the Xerox machine.

“Snow White has to be out by Christmas—if not it’ll be too bad for Disney’s,” 20-year-old platinum blonde Reidun “Rae” Medby wrote her boyfriend from her Hollywood apartment late one night in the fall of 1937. She was barely able to keep her eyes open after a month of working weekends and double shifts in the Ink and Paint department, the all-female “finishing school” of hand-drawn animation, during the final push on the groundbreaking film. “The minute I get a pen in my hand my brain goes numb—just like it does at the studio. Don’t be upset if I start inking ducks and mice.”

The Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck color short films that had lured Rae to the jumbled Hyperion Avenue studio had grown ever more expensive—even a “mathemagician” like Walt’s brother Roy couldn’t shrink the six months of preparation, the thousands of cels (the celluloid sheets on which drawings were traced and colored before being photographed), or the two-week shoots they required. More tellingly, the films no longer reflected Walt’s ambitions for the rapidly evolving medium. Now everything was hanging on the production of the world’s first animated feature, about a pretty, ragtag princess and her seven bachelor heroes. Yet Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as Walt conceived it (and reconceived it, right up until its release), was based on the daring notion that a fairy-tale cartoon could hold an audience’s attention for more than an hour. It was proving to be a singularly labor-and-money-intensive crusade.

The end of the assembly line usually inherits all the problems. Preparing the animators’ vision for camera required the inking and painting of thousands of fragile, combustible cels with perfect refinement. During Snow White, it was not at all unusual to see the “girls”—as Walt paternalistically referred to them—thin and exhausted, collapsed on the lawn, in the ladies’ lounge, or even under their desks. “I’ll be so thankful when Snow White is finished and I can live like a human once again,” Rae wrote after she recorded 85 hours in a week. “We would work like little slaves and everybody would go to sleep wherever they were,” said inker Jeanne Lee Keil, one of two left-handers in the department who had to learn everything backward. “I saw the moon rise, sun rise, moon rise, sun rise.” Painter Grace Godino, who would go on to become Rita Hayworth’s studio double, also remembered the long days merging into nights: “When I’d take my clothes off, I’d be in the closet, and I couldn’t figure it out: am I going to sleep or am I getting up?” Click HERE to continue reading…

Miami’s punk contingent went sleepless last week while the KILL YOUR IDOLS/PUNK IS EVERYTHING installation, sponsored by CONVERSE, “with love,” shook ART BASEL. A poignant tribute to the lasting vitality of underground punk culture, the exhibition was curated by author, artist, and punk historian BRYAN RAY TURCOTTE, whose books “Fucked Up and Photocopied” and the newly-published “Punk is Dead, Punk is Everything” are virtual textbooks of punk art over the years. Classic punk flyer imagery from Turcotte’s books formed the foundation of the exhibition’s visuals (and the exhibition’s tear-away wallpaper) and was augmented by a show of original photographs by lenswoman EILEEN POLK who captured early visions of everyone from the Dead Boys and The Clash, to The Misfits and The Ramones, in her 30+ year career. Nightly entertainment in the form of live music by punk upstarts like THE BRUTAL KNIGHTS, MATT & KIM, NODZZZ, CAUSTIC CHRIST, SEX/VID, and HEX DISPENSERS, to name a few kept the crowd sweaty till morning, while old school Chuck Taylor product tosses kept everyone’s feet on the ground. HAVE A LOOK:

Pre-show it’s all fun and games for The Brutal Knights…

But when the lights go on, the boners come out…

And the rockin gets heavy…

Darren “DR” Romanelli, OHWOW Gallery’s Al & Karla Moran, Karina, and reformed gutter punk KAWS…

Caustic Christ fires up…

And the crowd gets restless…

Caustic Christ in the lineup…

Annihilation Time in a rare calm moment…

Sex/Vid live on a steady diet of porno…

Reigning Sound remain undefeated…

The involuntary teardown begins…

Free souvenirs for purple haired girls…

Sculpture of all kinds, big & small, took center stage at this year’s ART BASEL with amazing offerings seemingly around every corner. The work of young LA artist JULIAN HOEBER, however, kept us coming back for more. His recent “bullet hole” series of bronze busts has us mesmerized, along with Japanese Pop Art master TAKASHI MURAKAMI who recently ponied up $15K for Hoeber’s bullet ridden self-portrait bust. Expect big things from Julian on the horizon. HAVE A LOOK:

NIKE SPORTSWEAR took the hipsters to town at this year’s ART BASEL in Miami on Friday nite when their AARON ROSE-curated “Art Damage” party broke open in conjunction with the NADA art fair. Featuring visual displays drawn from the label’s “Being True” photography campaign, video portraits of NSW athletes by acclaimed artist ROBERT WILSON, and elements of their recent alliance with the “Beautiful Losers” documentary film, the party shifted into overdrive when the evening’s real entertainment kicked in courtesy of musical guests THE SADS, NO AGE, and PANDA BEAR. Needless to say, heads were rocked, sweat was poured, and art was damaged by all. HAVE A LOOK:

The endless queue…

Crowd control…

Girls gone mild…

The furry ice cream dude…

“Rimited Edition TV” makes its debut…

The “Being True” container installation…

The fine print…

“Yeah, Miami sucks but it’s, like, totally better than LA…”

Yankees bat boy/NSW impresario Christian Parkes with curator and Sads boy Aaron Rose…

The kind of girl you literally pay to have at your party…

Beautiful Losers Dunk-a-thon…

Hipster pileup…

“Damn my tag looks cool…”

Keith Morris goes chalk crazy…

The Sads let loose with some full-on sorrow rock…

Dude in the white T can “feel” Aaron Rose’s Sad-ness…

No Age get to shredding…

Vice’s next “Do’s & Don’ts” photo…

Panda Bear gets to twiddling…

And making the young boys and girls cry…

NSW’s Christian Parkes found love with candystriper Andy Dick…

Robert Wilson goes big in HD…

“Sorry, sir, we didn’t have a valet at this event. We’re not sure who you handed your keys to…”

Art Basel saw Ryden and White at the top of their game…

Having seen an astounding array of high quality offerings at this year’s ART BASEL, we still can’t help but marvel at the insane quality of the new work put forth by Supertouch’s own resident modern old masters MARK RYDEN and ERIC WHITE. Debuting the centerpiece of his forthcoming Tokyo solo show opening in February, Ryden showed off the 7′ wide oil painting “Sophia’s Bubbles,” announcing a new, more simple style and palette in the process. Meanwhile, master of figurative detail Eric White continued his “Psychology of Interiors” series of oil paintings to great success with five amazing new dreamscapes. HAVE A LOOK:

MARK RYDEN:

“Sophia’s Bubbles,” oil on canvas, 90″ x 30″, 2008

ERIC WHITE:

After days of tepid sales, guarded optimism, thinly veiled terror, and defiantly happening parties, ART BASEL 2008 was still a good year for, well, art. Spread over dozens of fairs were epic pieces by Barry McGee, Tomoo Gokita, Friends With You, Chiho Aoshima, Richard Prince, Mark Ryden, Barbara Kruger, Hyungkoo Lee, Josh Keyes, Robert Williams, Colin Christian, Todd James, Ron English, KAWS, Dearraindrop, Tony Oursler, Raymond Pettibon, , Eric White, Usugrow, Chris Mars, Fafi, Dash Snow, Aurel Schmidt, Scott Campbell, Phil Frost, Shepard Fairey, The Clayton Brothers, Takashi Murakami, and Kehinde Wiley, to name but a scant few, and celebrity buyers like Brad Pitt, Pharrell, Sofia Coppola, Jay-Z, and Dennis Hopper were still out shopping—though not necessarily buying—in full effect. Even Paris Hilton made her usual appearance. All in all, it was a good year to look at art, just not necessarily a great one to buy a lot of it. Following is a flashback of some of the cool stuff. HAVE A LOOK:

Additional photos by our homegirl The Toy Baroness, Manuel Peralta, and Jason Nolan…

Pharrell explains the dopness of his “Perspectives” chair…

Paris contends “art is, like, totally cool.” Pam agrees. The two hug in celebration…

Takashi Murakami with dealer Emmanuel Perrotin…

Jay-Z inquires as to whether he can get the frame encrusted with diamonds…

Retina’s massive outdoor wall piece…

The Toy Baroness cops a plea..

Artistic comrades-in-arms and emissaries of Franco-American relations SHEPARD FAIREY & WK INTERACT were literally some of the busiest artists on the streets in Miami last week at ART BASEL. While both were represented by galleries at several fairs, the pair also managed to get extremely busy in the streets, posting up large-scale pieces throughout the Wynwood district with Shepard’s installations featuring political imagery from his recent Shooting Gallery SF show, while Frenchman WK illustrated a monochromatic futuristic-cops-and robbers scenario gone wrong. HAVE A LOOK:

Additional photos by Michelle Brecher and Manuel Peralta…

SHEPARD FAIREY:

Shepard chills with moneyman gallerist Jonathan Levine…

I was just down in Miami for Art Basel and it was a blast. I took a sturdy crew including Z Bomit, Dan Flores, and Nic Bowers to help handle bis. We bombed Miami for three nights and also did an amazing legal wall coordinated by Logan Hicks and Darren “Books” for the PRIMARY FLIGHT project. The hilarious thing is that right when we started the mural a cop pulled up and asked what we were doing. We told him the spot was a legal wall and he said “cool, I’ll hang out and make sure no one bothers you guys”. The cop even grabbed a crow bar out of the trunk and helped us pry off an old sign that was in the way on the wall. We were worried he would notice the connection to all the images we put up in the city, but he either didn’t, or didn’t care. When it was getting dark, the cop even turned his lights on the wall. The whole surreal incident was the real version of a board series Real Skateboards did in the 90’s called the “Real Fantasy Series” which had graphics of cops bucketing out swimming pools to drain them for skating… hilarious.  These photos are less than half the spots we did. Obey had a party with Spread Magazine and Supertouch Art  at the Shore Club and I got to spin records with my favorite DJ, Z-Trip who killed it as usual. A ton of great people and old friends came through the party. Russell “Rush” Simmons even rolled through toward the end. Thanks to Levi’s, Obey Clothing, Bombay Sapphire, and Lucky Beer for supporting the party. Of course the art fairs were cool too. Jonathan Levine did an awesome job with my work in his booth at Scope. I saw a lot of great art at Scope, Basel, and Pulse, but there was creativity on the streets and everywhere else. Basel is pretty intense and I’d recommend checking it out. —Shepard

WK INTERACT:

Throughout the seemingly endless sea of imagery, from good to bad, high to low, one of the most consistent themes of this year’s ART BASEL was none other than President #44-to-be, BARACK OBAMA, by a slew of artists no doubt hoping to cash in on some of the last vestiges of hope most Americans have left to cling to. Here’s a brief recap of some of the visual homages. HAVE A LOOK:

Casting a distinct pall over the already overcast Miami area on Thursday nite was the opening party of rocker/painter MARILYN MANSON’s “Trismegistus,” (named for the legendary Greek alchemist) his first ART BASEL solo show, presented by Germany’s GALERIE BRIGITTE SCHENK. Housed at the 101 EXHIBIT space in the design district, the show featured over 20 watercolor works by the painter spanning the past eight years of his ever-tumultuous life. Of course, the subject matter of the paintings did not disappoint, reflecting the artist’s deeply dark sense of humor, and included a transvestite Charlie Chaplin, Jon Benet Ramsey as Sleeping Beauty, portraits of the Black Dahlia, a bleeding, triple-faced Christ, and a self-portrait as an old, bald absinthe drinker. Painting titles were equally imaginative and included poetic bits like “Green Whore of Love,” “I’ve got my arm around no one,” and “The man who eats his fingers.” The show remains on display through February 2009, giving Tampa’s massive Goth population ample time to organize a massive field trip/Greyhound bus convoy to the show. HAVE A LOOK:

MM with ladyfriend Isani Griffith. Black, as always, is the new black…