The Power of Art in Disney Parks’ “Renovations”
Art can stir the soul and move the spirit. It can be a measure of sophistication, a litmus test to sort out the wrong people, a dodge to avoid the real world, and a confidence game to bilk the willing stooges or unsuspecting rubes.
Art is after all a commodity sought by man, made by man, judged by man, and bought by man.
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure has a new mural. Yeah, all this comes up because Disney has been making changes to its parks. They’re taking out some pieces of corporate commissioned art and replacing them with new pieces of corporate commissioned art. It’s funny, when I say it that way there’s really no difference between a motel changing out the prints in a room and theme park spending big money on a mural outside a new marquee attraction. Unless of course Motel 6 has positioned themselves as an integral part of your life and a tradition to pass down to your children. Did I miss that? No? Did Howard Johnson ever present themselves as storytellers with the power to shape the culture?
Disney has done this before. For instance, Carousel of Progress has had at least two different soundtracks and Disney snobs debate the merits of them. Then again, when one person prefers, “The Best Time of Your Life” to “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” no one gets accused of racism. For some reason If you think the new piece being installed outside Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is not up to the quality standards of previous Disney park art then you’ve got some bigoted animus barely hidden behind a patina of art criticism.
Here’s the new mural. It’s not good.
This is the sort of thing a small town or neighborhood chamber of commerce commissions for the side of an abandoned building on a blighted street.
Do I know anything about the artist? No, but I have assumed that she’s black for two reasons. That the artist is black because this is Disney in 2023 and the ride centers around a black character. That it’s a woman because that figure on the left is clearly a Simpsons rendering of Demi Lovato. I could be wrong, it might be a white dude, after all the third figure from the left is obviously Donald Trump with his eyes closed mid-sneeze.
OK, that’s a lie, the real reason I know is that people are being accused of racism, you got me.
I can’t be the only one who thought that art had no race. Sure, the artist has a race and different cultures embrace different aesthetics, but the art itself? Shouldn’t it speak on its own?
Back when Italians weren’t considered “white” Michelangelo’s Vatican Pieta was still a work of brilliance. Then again, Italy is in Europe and maybe Eurocentric art gets a pass from racists.
The Great Wave off Kanagawa is an iconic woodblock print from Japan and it rivals any of the same medium out of Europe, probably exceeding most of them.
It’s not that man can longer create works of enduring beauty, take for instance Lou Li Rong.
We’ll leave it there because there is not world enough nor time to cover the millennia of great art from all over the world and a listing of “acceptable” art from across the globe would just serve as evidence of deep seeded racism to someone who was inclined to see racism in criticism. A flippant paragraph like this is no insulation either.
Now, for the brass tax. What’s with this graffiti nonsense? If you’re trying to lean on the Harlem Renaissance the color pallet is all wrong. If you’re trying to create something to tie into Tiana, then you already have an artistic pattern in Tiana’s dream sequence for Almost There.
Is this an attempt to make non-European art? If so, it’s a failure not just on aesthetic but also philosophical grounds. If we are here through unguided evolution, then we all share a common root in the tree of human civilization. If we each carry breath of the divine, then our souls share a common lineage. Either way the basic rules of beauty are a unifying thread around the world. Europe has been engaged in a constant artistic conversation with Africa and Asia since before the pharaohs. Do you want to turn your back on the overly rigid mathematical balance of the Renaissance? Great, so did Michelangelo. Are you looking to do something in a more primitivist vein? Let me introduce you to Picasso.
Now, I do have some sympathy for modern artists (those that are in modernity, not those that make “modern art”). If that point of a portrait is to both faithfully represent a subject in form and spirit then a well staged photograph might be superior. When a school child can walk into a museum and see perfection carved from marble more than 500 years ago what can you contribute? I guess you can deconstruct and recontextualize, but then your art isn’t a mural, sculpture, or mosaic, those are just mediums for your message, and the message is the real art.
What we have in the new mural is the visual arts equivalent of content. Bold lines and bright colors filling space, not meant to be remembered, and executed perfectly.
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