Although the word \u201canimation\u201d may bring to mind rascally, anthropomorphic bunnies, cats and ducks doing outlandish things, the truth of the medium\u2019s diversity goes far beyond these few recognizable brands. According to MoMA curator Ron Magliozzi, whose new show covering 100 years of animation, It\u2019s Alive!, debuts this week, the field may have emerged with character-based, Disney-fied offerings, but it took a hard turn in 1946 when the visionary director John Hubley released a manifesto titled Animation Warrants a New Language.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very short, but it essentially talks about going beyond pigs and bunnies,\u201d Magliozzi told me, \u201cbasically leaving behind that first generation and doing the kind of animation that can do much more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Invigorated by the creative demands of the second world war \u2013 and buoyed by his work creating an animated film to promote Franklin Roosevelt in the 1944 election \u2013 Hubley aspired to animation that was driven by independent-minded creators who could engage deeply with important social issues and profound artistic questions.<\/p>\n
Although It\u2019s Alive! engages both parts of animation\u2019s history, with a black-and-white gallery offering such prewar characters as Gertie the Dinosaur, Felix the Cat (in a film where he plays \u201cRomeeow\u201d), and Raggedy Ann & Andy, where the show really ignites is in its postwar, in-color gallery, documenting some of the strangest and most fascinating animations you\u2019ll ever see.<\/p>\n
Winsor McCay \u2013 Gertie the Dinosaur animation drawing #28, 1914. Photograph: Robert N Brotherton Collection, Gift of Betty Adam Brotherton<\/p>\n
While Magliozzi noted the inherent challenges to introducing a range of widely unknown and decidedly ambitious animations, he had early signs that he was hitting the mark when one particular constituency gave him glowing feedback.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of the art is going to be unfamiliar to most people,\u201d he explained, \u201cbut I know it\u2019s exciting stuff because we\u2019ve gotten very good feedback from the installation so far. When the guards stop by to see what you\u2019re doing, you know you\u2019re on the right track.\u201d<\/p>\n
Take, for instance, the American artist and Oscar\u2013winning film-maker Jerome Hill, whose The Sand Castle is a Jungian fantasia that begins as a black-and-white film about a boy\u2019s trip to the beach and ends as a remarkable stop-motion animation into a dreamlike version of the titular castle. The animated section comes complete with a bizarre dining room sequence and a ballroom fantasia \u2013 according to an interview with Hill conducted by Jonas Mekas, Jung himself inspired all of this creativity when the great psychologist told Hill: \u201cDon\u2019t put me in the film; let my ideas be shown in a film.\u201d<\/p>\n
In another bit of gorgeous whimsy, Magliozzi has chosen to exhibit the legendary Sesame Street animator Jane Aaron. The show has many of the hundreds of amazing letters of the alphabet that she created for the show, as well as her visuals of famous artists and art works, among them Vincent Van Gogh and Picasso\u2019s Girl Before a Mirror \u2013 in Aaron\u2019s animation, these figures are taking note of their own nose, eyes and mouth, making for striking visuals to accompany the Sesame Street standard Right in the Middle of My Face. \u201cJane is one of the primary animators from Sesame Street,\u201d Magliozzi said. \u201cAudiences might know of her work but not necessarily know who she was. So it\u2019s a special thing to be able to showcase her here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jane Aaron \u2013 Right in the Middle of My Face Picasso sneeze animation drawing, 1993. Photograph: Jane Aaron Collection, Gift of Skip Blumberg, 2023.<\/p>\n
MoMA has dedicated holdings of 13 different forms of animation \u2013 among them stop-motion, cel, rotoscope, pinscreen and pixilation \u2013 giving Magliozzi a true treasure trove to draw from. Having worked at MoMA for nearly 50 years, Magliozzi was able to participate in acquiring many of these collections, and he was excited to have another opportunity to exhibit them. \u201cWe have such a wealth of animation here, so that really was the inspiration for this show.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an effort to make the artistry behind these films more accessible to audiences, It\u2019s Alive! will screen 20 films within the gallery space, offering viewers a chance to get a closeup view of these striking sights. Making an innovative move, Magliozzi has chosen to screen these films without sound, granting viewers space to pay full attention to the remarkable visuals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sound is distracting, and so without sound people really focus differently,\u201d Magliozzi explained. \u201cThere will be an app that folks can have on their phone to listen to the sound. So it\u2019s possible to not miss out on that if you want it, but I think most people will experience them without sound, which is the way I want them to experience it.\u201d<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s one animated short in It\u2019s Alive! that audiences will be likely to know, it\u2019s MTV\u2019s I Want My MTV! ad campaign from the channel\u2019s rise to prominence in the early 1980s. Featuring animated versions of era superstars like Cyndi Lauper, Billy Idol, Paul McCartney and Pat Benatar, the ad helped etch MTV into the stratosphere of 80s pop culture, while burning the catchphrase into the minds of a generation.<\/p>\n
A film accompanying the MTV portion of the show offers outtakes of the filming sessions where some of the 80s\u2019 most famous rock stars endlessly utter \u201cI want my MTV!\u201d, trying to get the catchphrase just right. \u201cIt\u2019s people like Cyndi Lauper, the Police, Peter Wolf just saying it over and over again. I want people to hear \u2018I want my MTV!\u2019 over and over again in the gallery!\u201d Magliozzi laughed.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Alive! ends with the advent of digital, which Magliozzi sees as a fundamental shift of the medium, comparing it to streaming music versus listening to it on vinyl. \u201cA film print is a mechanical object, when it goes into a projector it\u2019s alive, viewers can feel it,\u201d he said. \u201cWith many of the films we\u2019re screening for the show, we had a choice between digital print or a 35mm print, and in most cases we\u2019re going with the 35 because people can just sense it, it\u2019s a physical thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond being a buffet of a century\u2019s worth of incredible animation, Magliozzi hopes that It\u2019s Alive! will be a way of bringing generations together. Whether you watched Sesame Street in the 1970s or the 2010s, you can come to MoMA\u2019s galleries and be dazzled by something that\u2019s probably quite new and thrilling, hopefully connecting with others outside of your age group. \u201cIt\u2019s a very cross-generational thing,\u201d Magliozzi. \u201cChildren love it, adults love it. It\u2019s a bonding experience, so it\u2019s really fun to do for that reason.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although the word \u201canimation\u201d may bring to mind rascally, anthropomorphic bunnies, cats and ducks doing outlandish things, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,60,270],"class_list":["post-576946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}