Michael Bossanko, "One Mile Further, Another Brand New Smile"
Chen Jie , "Mickey Bamboo Diagram"
Snéco Smith, Bundle Variant No.0026 (An Ode to My First Love Mickey Mouse)
Jeff Shelley, "Model Mitch's Personality"
Chen Guanxi, "Threesome"
Soeda Nana 《爱》
Lu Pingyuan "Gourd"
Zhou Brown Brown "Mickey Code"
Michael John Kelly, Cartoon Town 1991
◎ Brother.J
As Walt Disney, who founded Disney from scratch, said, the smile is beyond time, the imagination has no age limit, and the dream will never fade, and his most classic image, Mickey Mouse, is the best representative of this optimistic spirit. More than ninety years later, Mickey still brings us endless laughter and imagination.
When Walt Disney created the cartoon character transformed from a mouse into a small mouse in the 1920s, did he expect the character to change into various forms of art today and meet the audience in Shanghai, China? Disney and UCCA Lab, a subsidiary of the UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, brought the world-famous "Mickey: The True Original Exhibition" art exhibition into China for the first time, the first stop was the Yuz Museum - "Curiosity Without Boundaries: Mickey Art Exhibition", from June to October, in Shanghai, not only can you go to Disneyland to play, but also have a whimsical Mickey Mouse world.
Mickey of the world
Walking into the exhibition, we will pass through four major sections: "Hello Mickey! "From the True Classics", "Mickey & / in China" and "Walking with Mickey". The background to know is that the original prototype of this exhibition came from New York in 2018, in celebration of the 90th anniversary of Mickey's birth, curated by Dylan Romanelli, invited 23 artists to hold an exhibition, toured to Tokyo, Japan in 2020, the theme was upgraded to "Mickey: The True Original & Beyond", and invited Japanese artists to collaborate on the creation. This time in China, it is another upgraded version, which not only includes some works of art in New York and Tokyo, but also invites more than 20 Chinese artists to participate in the creation, and its spirit is the same as the original exhibition, that is, "freely explore Mickey and reinterpret its meaning". The artist works inspired by Mickey, without restriction on form and technique, but only Mickey (at most, his girlfriend Minnie) can appear in the creation.
So in the first two sections, we will mainly see exhibition works from New York and Tokyo, and in the last two sections, we will see how Mickey is represented under Chinese artists, although the two major sections have no intention of competing, but in the face of the world's art peers, it is estimated that invited Chinese artists will also do their best to use their own unique imagination to compete for eyeballs.
With the above questions in mind I set out on a Mickey tour.
The exhibition began by Mickey's classic image and high-saturation colors to present a joyful atmosphere, neon installations, collages, ready-made sculptures and other works with a sense of scene, the Artists' works of the New York Exhibition and the Tokyo Exhibition were mixed and matched in the space, except for a Mickey introduction at the beginning, the exhibition was not narrated from the history of Mickey's birth, but arranged through the relationship between works and works, works and spaces, so that everyone was immersed in the art world inspired by Mickey.
For example, Amanda Ross Ho's "Untitled T-Shirt" in a corner is a Mickey classic culture shirt with XXXXXXXXXXL numbers. Jeff Shelley's neon series "Model Mickey's Personality" became the best influencer photo wall. Daron Romanelli (DRx) '3000% Mickey Brick Bear', a giant doll made out of a second-hand Mickey and Minnie Mouse cultural shirts, and Snica Smith's sculpture "Bale Variation No.0026 (An Ode to My First Love Mickey Mouse)" made of Mickey's dolls became sculptures and installations that occupied space and attention. In front of these trendy and pop-style installations, it's natural that we want to take pictures.
Also familiar to Chinese audiences is Daniel Arxuan, who previously had a solo exhibition at the Hao Art Museum, whose work is "Hidden Mickey", which is one of the series of "hidden images", although it is missing any color and half of the body is almost hidden into the wall, Mickey is still so easily recognizable that it is more eye-catching in the flowery works.
If I remember correctly, this work is closely followed by the Japanese calligrapher Wanmei's Zen Michi, and the calligrapher practices drawing three circles with brush and paper until the most satisfactory drawing is also a wonderful tribute in black and white. Next to Jeff Shelley's neon tube is WAKU Untitled, also with a tube, but very briefly, and the circle that forms it suggests parts of Mickey's head. Next to Snyco Smith's work full of love for Mickey, there is "Love" by Japanese artist Nana Ota, and the two doll arms that grow out of the painting hug each other, which is a breakthrough two-dimensional embrace.
China's Mickey
After being full of pop style and two-dimensional style works, it enters the latter two sections, which are also the areas where Chinese artists cooperate. Suddenly entering the open space of the art museum, it is like entering a large square, and the overall immersion seems to be much weaker, but it is also suitable for children or families to rest and relax in it.
The earliest Mickey's "Threesome" through Chen Guanxi's three eyes was immediately attracted by the "Mickey Energy Map" by The Chinese post-90s artist Chen Fanmaru. When I first saw Chen Fanmaru's works "Endless" and "Transporting Garden", I was attracted by her ability to use paper and her attention to traditional Chinese folk culture. This piece of work made of special paper, model cardboard, acrylic and mirror stainless steel, alternating colored rings of cold and warm are all over Mickey's body, which is a unique map of Mickey's acupuncture point meridians, and Chen Fanmaru also introduced the mysteries of meridian names to the audience on the spot, such as the tip of the nose called Yingxiang, which is the charm of Chinese language. Chen Fanmaru also brought another work to the exhibition, "Imagination Scattering Project".
At the scene, you can see many people wearing "three-dimensional" three-dimensional Mickey ears, and when you go here, you find that this is Li Weizhen's work "True", and everyone is welcome to wear it.
Photographer Chen Man was invited to create a group of sculptures "Foot Soaking Mickey", did it reveal that this is her favorite health model? Feng Hanting's "Bicycle Wheel with Long Ears" is a tribute to Duchamp's "Bicycle Wheel" at a glance, Lu Pingyuan's "Gourd" associates Mickey's head with China's unique gourd, and Zhang Xinyi's oil painting "DreamNet" is very different, not using Mickey's ear image, but using Mickey's four fingers wearing gloves hands and arms to form a network.
In addition to Chen Fanmaru's work, which surprised people at the beginning, the works of jewelry designer Ning Xiaoli are also very different in all works, her "Strange Traces - The Greatness" made of ceramics and resins and other materials simulates the image of Mickey in ceramic form; in the front glass cabinet, there are the artist's Easter eggs: the "Strange Traces" series brooch made of ancient porcelain and gold craftsmanship, and more to see the exquisite craftsmanship and ingenuity of the design - whether it is the porcelain pieces and patterns on the front, or the fine glass beads on the back. People can't help but look closely, too want to have. Large and small works reflect each other, are related to each other and are different.
Deng Naixuan's "Parallel World" is also unforgettable, these two pieces of old Chinese soil cloth remodeled sofas, with traditional material skills, precipitated people's cherishing of things. Deng Naixuan and the co-craftsman Huang Tianxian drew the image of Mickey in his heart, and then Zheng Naixuan made the patchwork painting, which was wrapped on the sofa by Huang Tianxian's teacher and father, so that the chair became interesting and full of human temperature.
Works that connect strong personal emotions also include Wen Yipei and Ji Ye's "Mickey and Me", the artist Ji Ye has been reading Mickey Mouse magazine since she was a child, and in this installation painting, there is a small painting painted by the artist when she was 7 years old, which contains the story of Mickey and Minnie on the seashore, selected from two boxes of Mickey Mouse Donald Duck that she drew when she was a child. In the main part of the picture, the artist seems to be transformed into Mickey himself, smiling and greeting in the mirror, and the artist group shares their happiness when they are invited, because they like it, and the final work seems to complete a dialogue with childhood.
Chinese artists' works also include Li Gang's "Bee", Yang Mushi's "Stitching-Piece", Chen Jie's "Mickey Bamboo Diagram", He Tianqi's "Magic Mickey", Huang Qiqin's "Three Mickeys", etc., and new media interactive works include Liu Jiayu's "Dream of The Waves", Cao Yuxi's "Binary Pattern Mickey Edition", Noise Temple's "Dancing Mickey", and the artist's collaborative version of Snow Angel Mickey interpreted by five artists. The special planning unit of Shanghai Station, "Mickey & /in China", can be described as rich in form.
At the end of the exhibition, will this imaginative contest be won or lost in the end? In fact, I have been fascinated by the artist's imagination of Mickey's world, although each part can see different cultural symbols, but as the artists we met mentioned, it was a very fun experience, which is the interesting point of the art collaboration in this exhibition.
Disney's Mickey
In 1928, the world's first animated sound film, Steamboat Willie, was released in New York, and a little mouse dancing to the music, Mickey, was born.
At the end of the exhibition, we saw John Quinn's collaborative work "Recreating the Steamboat Willie", which reinterpreted the original animation and premiered in New York in 2018, and also came to Shanghai Station, where we saw two sets of animations playing side by side in a darkroom, one in the original 1928 and the other a new version reinterpreted by different artists. The original version composed of black and white lines is similar to the animation made by artists today in different ways, which is very exciting.
In fact, Mickey first appeared in another short film, Walt Disney's Crazy Airplane in 1928. In it, Mitch mimicked Charles Lindbergh, the first American pilot in history to successfully complete a one-man unplanned flight across the Atlantic, for an airplane adventure. However, because the screening did not receive a successful response and did not find a distributor, it did not leave an impression on the world. In the earliest appearance of "Crazy Plane", today it seems that Mickey is more like a real mouse, with a lot of white eyes, a pointed nose, no shoes, the image looks bad, and it looks more like a grumpy trickster. But in "Recreating the Steamboat Willie", Mickey has changed slightly, he puts on leather shoes, although in the plot he is thrown off the ship, twisted into a twist in the neck, and struggling to make love, and is a worldly loser, but through comic-like exaggeration, his spirit of daring Lotte's cute humor also begins to appear.
The creation of Mickey's image was at a time when Walt Disney was almost at the end of his rope. He experienced two entrepreneurial failures, the second encounter with the old man who cheated the copyright, but the adventurous Walt Disney decided to fight in Hollywood again, and it was at this time that Mickey appeared.
"For me, Mickey is a symbol of freedom." Walt Disney said of the story, "My brother Roy and I were sitting on the Hollywood train to Manhattan, and we were poor. Suddenly a little guy jumped out, and he made me forget my sorrows for a moment. ”
Mickey is more of another Walt Disney, a man who keeps failing but can find fun and motivation.
Mitch was born between World War I and World War II, a period of short-lived sustained economic prosperity in the United States and Western Europe, known in Europe as the "Golden 20s" and the United States as the "Roaring 20s", with the rise of industrialization, jazz pop, and modernist ideas erupting. The tide of the times is also a big reason for the success of Walt Disney's entrepreneurship, just in the second year of the release of "Recreating the Willy Steamboat", the economic crisis came, the Great Depression of the United States did not destroy Mickey's image, but let this optimistic loser image become the darling of the public, and under the management of disney brothers, it became the earliest commercial big IP, through the publication of comics, the continuous launch of animation and the increase of co-branded products, Mickey's fans are more and more, the image is more and more anthropomorphic, more and more gentlemanly.
In 1932, the 72nd issue of "Good Friend" magazine published the article "Painter Famous for Rats", which introduced in detail to Chinese readers disney's creation of Mickey, analyzed the success of animation in the market, Mickey was translated as Mickey in the text, and at this time Mickey comic strips also began to be introduced into China.
This vivacious guy became a household name in China through television: the introduction and popularity of CCTV's "Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck" program in the 1980s. In 2015, Disneyland opened in Shanghai, which also means that the Disney Group has developed in China. This character with two big black round ears, big yellow shoes, and white gloves has truly changed from Disney to a cultural symbol of the world.
Walt Disney himself once said, "I only hope we'll never forget one thing: that is, everything here started with a mouse." This sentence also appeared at the beginning of "Curiosity Without Boundaries: Mickey Art Exhibition", knowing all the above stories, the impression of the lively and active Mickey Mouse is still not at all like a 90-year-old look, but always alive and brings joy.
Photo courtesy of UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art