The Chinese Influence on 'Bambi'

[Randy W]

from the NY Times

 

 

How ‘Bambi’ Got Its Look From 1,000-Year-Old Chinese Art

The Chinese-American artist Tyrus Wong, who died last week at 106, was an incredibly accomplished painter, illustrator, calligrapher and Hollywood studio artist. But as Margalit Fox wrote in her obituary for Mr. Wong, “because of the marginalization to which Asian-Americans were long subject, he passed much of his career unknown to the general public.”

Work on ‘Bambi’

Mr. Wong is most renowned for his essential contribution to Walt Disney’s 1942 animated classic, “Bambi.” While he worked a drudge’s job at the Disney animation studio during the day, he spent nights painting hundreds of watercolors to show his own vision of the film’s look. Mr. Wong’s style emphasized the film’s animal characters in the foreground, evoking the lush surrounding forest with minimal brushwork, gentle washes and slashes of color.

 

 

 

 

Wong’s Influences

The spare but expressive style of Mr. Wong’s work draws heavily from the landscape paintings of the Song dynasty (A.D. 960–1279). In an interview, Nancy Berliner, curator of Chinese art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, called this period “the height of Chinese painting.”

Finely detailed elements, such as a gnarled tree or a sailboat crossing a lake, were surrounded by landscapes rendered in extremely subtle flecks and shades of ink. Although these works were made solely with black ink, artists at the time aimed to incorporate every shade of gray within their works, using deliberate brushwork and exquisite care.