I wasn’t planning to blog about this exhibition today but i’m just back from Watch Me Move: The Animation Show at Barbican and if i don’t share with you a couple of gems i saw there, i won’t be able to focus on anything else.
The exhibition traces the history of animation over the last 150 years in over 100 films by contemporary artists, animators, auteur filmmakers and exponents of experimental film alongside the production of commercial studios.
Wallace and Gromit, Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat and The Simpsons are there. Astro Boy and Sailor Moon too. So are dozens of films by artists, film-makers and studios such as Studio Ghibli, Fernand Léger, Harun Faroki, Cao Fei, Eadward Muybridge, Lumière Brothers, Stan Brakhage, Len Lye, William Kentridge, Kara Walker, etc.
Because this has to be a quick parenthesis before i get back to our regular programme, i’m going to copy/paste below a few links, images and embedded codes:
One of my favourite film is Rabbit by Run Wrake. Two children, as greedy and cruel as they are cute, find an Idol in the belly of a rabbit they have just brutally killed. Fortune and copious massacres ensue.
Run Wrake, Rabbit, 2005
Tim Burton and Rick Heinrichs’s cult stop-motion short film Vincent follows a young boy who dreams that his life is as ghoulish as one of Vincent Price‘s horror movies. Narrated by Vincent Price himself.
Tim Burton and Rick Heinrichs, Vincent, 1982
My heart goes to Vincent’s poor little dog.
Tim Burton and Rick Heinrichs, Vincent (screenshot), 1982
And The Tale of the Fox, a brilliant brilliant brilliant movie from 1929-1930 by Irene and Ladislas Starevich. The songs and dialogues are in verse and particularly delightful if you understand french.
Irene and Ladislas Starevich, Le Roman de Renard, 1929-1930
I also liked Matter in Motion by Semiconductor but there’s only a snippet of the film online. And there are two clay animation by Nathalie Djurberg. I’m like everyone, their dog and their uncle, i adore her work.
Nathalie Djurberg, The Rhinoceros and the Whale, 2008, Music by Hans Berg
Nathalie Djurberg, Putting Down the Prey, 2008. Music by Hans Berg
Nathalie Djurberg, Putting Down the Prey, 2008. Music by Hans Berg
View of the exhibition Watch Me Move: The Animation Show at Barbican. Photo credit: Lyndon Douglas
Trailer of the show:
The entrance price is a bit steep but then you could spend the whole afternoon moving from bench to bench watching the animation films. Watch Me Move: The Animation Show is open till 11 September 2011 at the Barbican Art Gallery, in London.