Roberta Smith Takes On Pixar And Likes The Fuzzy Parts

We haven’t yet made it to the MoMA to see the new Pixar show, but in the spirit of being well-informed and on top of the culturescape we read Roberta Smith’s take in today’s Times. We learned that the exhibition is definitely lacking a catalog (mentioned twice), that it’s not a dirty show (unlike the Armani one at the Guggenheim which just happened to coincide with a corporate gift), and that the furry fuzzy animals are the best. Oh, and she takes it back to some “art” “historical” “referent.”

Pixar’s innovation is ultimately primarily formal and stylistic. It brought a new and startling degree of spatial illusion and sculptural reality to animation, and, as we all know, illusion is an exciting, many-splendored thing. To see the characters and objects in “Toy Story” move, or more often career, through space for the first time was thrilling. You can imagine the Italians of the Renaissance experiencing a similar delight upon seeing the cleanly defined box of illusionist space created by Masaccio’s, Pollaiuolo’s and Raphael’s progressively more assured deployments of linear perspective.

Ah. Yes. Quite.

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