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"Walt Disney never thought of the work of his studio as the creation of art," reports Publisher Robert E. Abrams in the preface to Treasures of Disney Animation Art (Abbeville; 319 pages; $85). "His sole aim was to create entertainment." But the two goals are not mutually exclusive, as demonstrated by this vast selection gleaned from millions of sketches, paintings and layouts. Abrams' book continues the elevation of Disney from the Barnum of the barnyard to an aesthetician with uncanny instincts. This is no Mickey Mouse collection; it includes paintings by, of all people, Thomas Hart Benton and Salvador Dali, which were commissioned by Walt as "inspirational sketches" for his animators. At the studio, "fine art" was stressed. As one executive had it, "If it works in a Rubens it must work in Donald Duck." Proof is offered in the book's juxtaposition of Renaissance sketches with drawings from the early Snow White and Pinocchio, to the still unfinished feature The Black Cauldron. The comparison holds; these oversize pages contain small masterpieces of illustration that deserve a place on museum walls. Onscreen, the cartoons went by at the speed of 24 frames per sec. In this greatest of all Disney festivals, the work appears timeless.
If clothes make the man, interior decoration can sometimes be a vivid expression of the soul of a society. American Decorative Arts by Robert Bishop and Patricia Coblentz (Abrams; 405 pages; $65) forages through the American experience as expressed in its furniture and furnishings. The volume begins with a 1629 hooded wicker cradle, medieval in its lines, then follows the American progress from straight-backed Puritan spareness through the clotting commercial optimism and extravagance of the 19th century, and on into the 20th with its Saarinen plastic pedestal chairs and the eerie metaphysical fatuousness of Andy Warhol's wallpaper decorated with large portraits of cows' heads. Generously illustrated, with a minutely expert and civilized text.
Are photographers artists or technicians? They can be both, although logically not all technicians are necessarily artists. Still, the question is guaranteed to start an argument, with opinions usually separating along the dotted line of self-interest. Painters, with their pigments and brushes, generally would like to keep the house of art exclusive. Photographers, with their palettes of light and shadow, would like to get in. Hence, "History of an Art," the slightly aggressive subtitle of Photography (Rizzoli; 269 pages; $60), an elegant survey of the men and women behind the camera. Unquestionably all those in the book are artists. It is impossible to flip through these pages and not feel delight, wonder, surprise and that baser response to creative expression, the acquisitive itch. The examples range from the early photo realism of Eugene Durieu that imitates portrait painting to contemporary collage by Carel Balth that explores puzzling questions of perception. The text by Jean-Luc Daval, lecturer in art history at the University of Geneva, brings both the technique and the aesthetic of this dominant 20th century medium into sharp, tingling focus.