UPA at MoMA
UPA at MoMA
In the summer of 1955, the Museum of Modern Art presented a special exhibition: UPA: Form in the Animated Cartoon. Now, sixty years later, UPA cartoons return to MoMA, as part of its Technicolor retrospective. A special selection of color cartoons, by UPA and others, will screen on August 1 (and again on August 5).
The Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation was formed in 1915. It developed a series of two-color film processes, which were surpassed by the three-strip process, in 1932. Walt Disney was an early adopter; his Silly Symphony Flowers and Trees (1932) was produced in the three-strip process. The first feature film in three-strip Technicolor was Becky Sharp, a 1935 adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair (1847-1848).
All of UPA’s ninety theatrical shorts were produced in Technicolor. Four of them will appear in the MoMA show: Rooty Toot Toot, The Oompahs, Little Boy with a Big Horn, and Christopher Crumpet. Also on the bill is the 1942 Warner Bros. short The Dover Boys, an important precursor to the UPA style, with animation by future UPA director Robert “Bobe” Cannon. Five other shorts from Warners and Fleischer fill out the bill.
“Fleischer, UPA, and Looney Tunes Technicolor Cartoons, 1938-1955,” selected by Pixar’s Ralph Eggleston, will screen on Saturday, August 1 at 1:30pm and Wednesday, August 5 at 1:30pm at the Museum of Modern Art, New York Cty.
Glorious Technicolor continues through August 5, 2015.
July 24, 2015