Attached to the Mouse Disney & Contemporary Art

"In her innovative book Attached to the Mouse Holly Crawford examines the appropriation of the iconic images of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck with thoughtful scholarship and spirited humor."--Peter Selz, Professor Emeritus, History of Art, UC Berkeley.


"Enjoyable, brilliant, readable, and enormously informative. The seminal study of how mass media institution "Disney and Art" function in our culture, written with flashes of humour. It's likely to be a premier resource for years to come." --Professor Manuel Alvarado, Arts & Media, City University, London, UK


"For at least a half-century Mickey Mouse, ears and all, has served as one of the most potent icons in contemporary visual culture. The poster boy for everything from cinematic innovation to American cultural 'imperialism,' the animated rodent is freighted with a veritable encyclopedia of inference. Not surprisingly, artists the world over -- and especially Mickey's countrymen and -women -- have fixated on the simply, distinctively drawn figure. But however much that (deceptively) ingenuous face and unique silhouette turn up in Pop paintings, social-commentary cartoons, and even abstract sculpture, writers and historians have let Mickey's ubiquity pass without substantial comment. Until now. Defying the perils of post-modernist close reading, pop-culture fetishism, and the fabled wrath of Disney Corp., Holly Crawford proffers an exhaustive documentation, classification, and analysis of Mickey's many appearances in the visual art of our time. Her study fills a gap in the critical history of recent art, not to mention in Mouseology." --Peter Frank, Critic and Curator

Jonathan Lethem,"The Ecstasy of Influence. A Plagarism," Harpers, February 2007. (Commented on my book in his article.)

Review:"Exploding Pop Art Myths," by Lisa Paul Streitfeld, NY Arts magazine, Jan-Feb 2007

Publisher

This book is available worldwide: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, and of course my publisher-Roman & Littlefield (UPA imprint).

Abstract: An analysis of the contemporary artists who have used Disney images within the theoretical framework of Griselda Pollock’s Gambit, Mel Roman and Peter Stastny’s application and extension of Winnicott to the extraordinary relations of artists to their work, and a visaul application of Freud's anaylysis of a joke. Disney used new technology to create a new art form, animated cartoons, in the 1930s, and, via mass media, to elevate the anthropomorphized cartoon animals epitomized by Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck to celebrity status. He originally produced an optimistic feisty underdog mouse and berserk duck, along with an abundance of objects for an emerging consumer economy. In the 1950s, using the new technology of television to screen the Mickey Mouse Club and the opening of Disneyland, Disney established the Mouse as an icon of corporate success and American culture. Disneyland, and later Disney World, was praised by architects as a possible vision of a better future. The resurgence of the Mouse in the mid-1950s induced Pop artists to appropriate his image, importing his humorous connotations, and nostalgically depicting the feisty, underdog Mouse of their childhood rather than the emerging images produced for Disneyland and the Mickey Mouse Club. Their work reflected their attachment, and found acceptance with viewers and buyers for the same reason. Referencing globally popular cartoon figures while expressing nuanced differences from Disney proved to be a career gambit that assisted the success of these artists. Later artists referenced both the stable iconic Mouse as well as the work of earlier artists. They addressed many issues through both portraiture and narrative works. Critics now assailed the established iconic Mouse as a symbol of corporate consumerism and American cultural imperialism, and artists visually expressed the dark (domination and excess) side of the Mouse rather than that of the plucky individual striving for abundance.

Table or Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Mouse: Debut, Copyright and Referenced

Chapter 2: Artists and the Mouse: Humor, Attachment, and the Gambit

Chapter 3: It All Started With a Mouse

Chapter 4: Nostalgia Mouse

Chapter 5: Next Stop Main Street Disneyland

Chapter 6: Love and Hate

Chapter 7: Portrait and the Mickeyfied

Chapter 8:Grim(m) Mouse

Chapter 9: Conclusions