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ARTICLES
REVIEW
Blackstar and Lazarus
By Ron Barbagallo - February 17, 2016
With the advent of Facebook, posts I write for social media sometimes end up evolving into content good enough for this website. While off topic in a linear sense, anyone who knows me knows how influenced I've been by studying the professional choices of David Bowie. So it's not a surprise, that I'd be moved enough by his songs Blackstar and Lazarus to write a review about them shortly after Bowie's death. So what is the song Blackstar about? Blackstar, the song itself rests as an overture, much like...
Photograph © Jimmy King
By RON BARBAGALLO
DAVID BOWIE
Blackstar and Lazarus
FINE ART REVIEW
KAWS • Man's Best Friend
By Ron Barbagallo - October 25, 2014
The recent KAWS show at the Honor Fraser asks very loudly: What is caricature? And what is a cartoon in 2014? The lines defining that in people’s minds (literally) have been blurred. Appropriating Charles Schultz’s Charlie Brown characters and adding a few from Hanna-Barbera...
© KAWS
By RON BARBAGALLO
KAWS • MAN'S BEST FRIEND
FINE ART REVIEW and VIEWPOINT
Taryn Simon • Birds of the West Indies
By Ron Barbagallo - March 29, 2014
Taryn Simon’s conspiracy essay about straight men glazes over several points. That human beings are mammals (even if we think of ourselves as above them), and there is a big distinction between what triggers heterosexual male LUST in SOME men and the addiction that is needy codependent love. Additionally, marginalizing ALL men through this type of periscope is a flamboyant generalization, and one that suggests trying to tell everyone how to behave is an argument about TWO people when in fact the exhibit goes out of its way to mock the nature and desires of the type of men (and women) who don't share Simon's view. Rather than condemning someone for liking what they like, it might be more respectful for all parties to have the epiphany many people do when ‘things are not working out’ and move on to find someone with whom your tastes lay.
Photograph of the askew Gallery Entrance by Ron Barbagallo
FINE ART REVIEW
Albert Oehlen • New Paintings
By Ron Barbagallo - June 23, 2014
These are landscapes and visual diaries - written with line, painted with aqueous color fields and collaged with printed pop art media. They traffic in the space they’re created and their lines and flat fields make use of the room they’re exhibited in.
© Albert Oehlen
By RON BARBAGALLO
ALBERT OEHLEN • NEW PAINTINGS
TARYN SIMON is an
By RON BARBAGALLO
ANGRY BIRD OF THE WEST INDIES
FINE ART REVIEW
Richard Avedon • Women
By Ron Barbagallo - November 5, 2013
Richard Avedon asks you to take a look at women. All women. From every possible vantage point. And in every way they exist. But most importantly, Richard Avedon asks that you do so in the way he communes with them as they fall through the guise of his camera’s lens and nest within the emulsion of his still frame film stock.
Photographs by Richard Avedon, © The Richard Avedon Foundation
By RON BARBAGALLO
RICHARD AVEDON • WOMEN
FINE ART REVIEW
Inez & Vinoodh
By Ron Barbagallo - August 12, 2013
Both elegant and withdrawn, simplistic yet containing elements that are often highly energized, the aesthetic of photographers Inez & Vinoodh is all about the gesturing they employ as they transform their subjects from regular people and twist them into icons. It’s also about the details, like the drapping of a cloth around someone’s head, or a piece of lace applied to someone’s face. And not to be understated, their work is about the digital alterations and adaptations woven in and around their imagery.
© Inez & Vinoodh
By RON BARBAGALLO
INEZ & VINOODH
FINE ART REVIEW
Richard Serra • Double Rifts
By Ron Barbagallo - May 11, 2013
Emotion: Dark, Brooding - Omnipresent Emotion. When one stands in opposition to a Richard Serra piece of art, the viewer is immediately drawn into a two way dialog. A visual lecture of paternal proportions that is at once informative but scolding at the same time. Deeply textured, but simple in its harsh use of shape, Serra’s oily black flat fields fray at their edges offering the viewer an occasional contrast of white which acts as a basilica for clean, even reflection. This visual conversation is as intricate in thought as it is in Serra’s suggested simplicity of execution.
FINE ART REVIEW
Richard Prince • Cowboys
By Ron Barbagallo - March 24, 2013
But Richard Prince's Cowboys is more than a theme, it’s Fine Art and it's execution. And, the use of color here is no small feat. It can be as bold as simple interplay or as unusual as a light blue smattering in a field of red/orange. It can overwhelm or cause you to pull back. But within the application, it is brittle with electricity, stoicism, and peppered with sadness - like a painted photograph of a family member you never met or a handwritten note from your long departed Dad.
© Richard Serra
© Richard Prince
By RON BARBAGALLO
By RON BARBAGALLO
RICHARD SERRA • DOUBLE RIFTS
RICHARD PRINCE • COWBOYS
DESIGN WITH A PURPOSE,
an interview with Ralph Eggleston
ARTICLE
Design With a Purpose,
an interview with Ralph Eggleston, production designer on Pixar's WALL-E
By Ron Barbagallo - February 9, 2009
Long time Pixar virtuoso, Ralph Eggleston discusses his role as production designer on Andrew Stanton's Wall-E. Exploring the production design for Wall-E from many creative angles, Eggleston takes a detailed look at how he uses color to tell a story or to evoke a certain emotion. Previously unpublished art from Wall-E's production help illustrate how Eggleston and his team at Pixar created production design with a purpose.
By RON BARBAGALLO
© Disney/Pixar
THE ART OF MAKING OF
ARTICLE
The Art of Making Pixar's Ratatouille
By Ron Barbagallo - January 28, 2008
An overview article on Pixar's film Ratatouille is followed by three individual interviews with Director and writer Brad Bird, production designer Harley Jessup and director of photography/lighting Sharon Calahan. Disney/Pixar contributed exclusive art which includes the storyboards from the famous fixing the soup scene and concept art from Michel Gagné.
By RON BARBAGALLO
© Disney/Pixar
PIXAR'S RATATOUILLE
ARTICLE
Shedding Light on The Little Matchgirl
By Ron Barbagallo - January 20, 2006
Shedding Light on the Little Matchgirl takes a detailed look at Disney's adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen story The Little Match Girl. The article includes exclusive art and an interview with the short's director Roger Allers. It also delves further into the meaning behind Hans Christian Andersen's short story and its origins.
© Disney Enterprises, Inc.
SHEDDING LIGHT ON
By RON BARBAGALLO
THE LITTLE MATCHGIRL
MAKING HIS MARK IN CLAY,
By RON BARBAGALLO
an interview with Nick Park
© DreamWorks Animation SKG and Aardman Feature.
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is distributed by DreamWorks Distribution LLC.
ARTICLE
Making his Mark in Clay, an interview with Nick Park
By Ron Barbagallo - October 7, 2005
In support of his much anticipated film, Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Nick Park shares some of his thoughts regarding his artistic influences, on how he uses drawing to start telling a story and what it was like to bring everyone's favorite plasticine duo, Wallace and Gromit, to the big screen for the very first time.
FROM CONCEPT ART
ARTICLE
From Concept Art to Finished Puppets, an interview with Graham G. Maiden, puppet fabrication supervisor on Tim Burton's Corpse Bride
By Ron Barbagallo - July 21, 2005
Graham G. Maiden goes into detail describing his role as Puppet Fabrication Supervisor for Tim Burton's Corpse Bride. Maiden's interview uses exclusive art and images from the film's production to narrate the many stages that went into making stop motion puppets for this film.
By RON BARBAGALLO
TO FINISHED PUPPETS
© Warner Bros.
an interview with Graham G. Maiden
LORENZO
ARTICLE
Lorenzo
By Ron Barbagallo - February 27, 2005
Working with an idea that Disney veteran Joe Grant came up with 20 years ago, director / production designer Mike Gabriel nearly single-handily created the look of this 2D/CGI short named Lorenzo. Brought to you from executive producers Roy E. Disney and Don Hahn, this short tells the story of a fat cat whose haughty manners become the cause of his own undoing. The article includes an interview with Gabriel along with conceptual art and story sketches Gabriel created himself.
By RON BARBAGALLO
© Disney/Pixar
FILM REVIEW
Ponyo
By Ron Barbagallo - July 16, 2009
Any discussion of Hayao Miyazaki's work needs to acknowledge that within the world of Japanese anime, Miyazaki's films are nearly unique. Many anime films use a similar visual style and their directors frequently traffic within storylines of revenge or apocalypse. While the works of Miyazaki do owe their visual lineage to the aesthetics of anime, it's Miyzaki's sensitive portraits of children, girls in particular, and his morality plays that more closely align his films with the type of narratives normally written by children's book authors Lewis Carroll, Hans Christian Andersen or J.R.R. Tolkien. Whether grounded here on Earth or heralding from some mythical place of Miyazaki's creation, Hayao Miyazaki's stories are told with the precision of a master filmmaker. As a director, his visual vocabulary and specialized storytelling are like fellow stylistic auteurs Stanley Kubrick, Tim Burton or Quentin Tarantino -- directors whose aesthetic sense is so strong and storytelling so unique that every film they make, even the small ones, are worth exploring.
© 2009 Nibariki-GNDHDDT
FILM REVIEW
Where the Wild Things Are
By Ron Barbagallo - October 26, 2009
At first glance, Where the Wild Things Are might not strike you as what you were expecting but in this case, that's a good thing. We've been pre-programmed to slapstick humor, exaggerated facial expressions and topical gags from our kids' films. While Where the Wild Things Are is reverend to both the 338 words of Maurice Sendak's book of the same name and the look of the characters he created, David Eggers and Spike Jonze have updated this film genre with a twist by imbuing character traits, personalities and even neurosis to Sendak's furry, dysfunctional family.
© 2009 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
SPIKE JONZE and DAVID EGGERS
HAYAO MIYAZAKI
By RON BARBAGALLO
PONYO
ARTICLE
Remembering Frank Thomas
By Ron Barbagallo - November 26, 2004
Written in memory of Disney animator Frank Thomas, Remembering Frank Thomas takes a look at the craft behind Thomas' work by reviewing the pencil animation he drew for the "I've Got No Strings" sequence featured in Walt Disney's 1940 feature film Pinocchio.
By RON BARBAGALLO
© Disney Enterprises Inc.
REMEMBERING FRANK THOMAS
A BLADE OF GRASS
ARTICLE
A Blade of Grass
By Ron Barbagallo - June 30, 2003
Featuring background paintings from Steamboat Willie, Flowers and Trees, Mickey's Mellerdrammer, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Bambi, this article is an aesthetic tour of the evolution that took place within 2D background painting at the Disney Studio from 1928 through 1942. It shows how one can make an impact on an entire genre by thinking outside the box, even if that impact starts with something as small as a blade of grass.
By RON BARBAGALLO
© Disney Enterprises Inc.
By RON BARBAGALLO
ARTICLE
The Destiny of Dalí's Destino
By Ron Barbagallo - September 8, 2003
Back in 1946, Salvador Dalí started work on an animated short subject for the Walt Disney Studio. Walt Disney's plan was to continue pushing animation into untried areas. However the package pictures of the 1940's proved less and less successful as the decade ended, and Dalí was asked to abandon the project after creating hundreds of paintings and drawings. This writing illustrates the story behind The Destiny of Dalí's Destino.
© Disney Enterprises, Inc.
THE DESTINY OF DALÍ'S DESTINO
ARTICLE
Building Mike's New Car
By Ron Barbagallo - August 5, 2002
Mike’s New Car takes off where Pixar’s hit film Monsters, Inc. left off. Co-director/creative director of shorts department Roger Gould and story artists Rob Gibbs and Jeff Pidgeon discuss how they followed up the CGI adventures of Mike and Sully by Building Mike's New Car.
© Disney/Pixar
BUILDING MIKE'S NEW CAR
By RON BARBAGALLO
By RON BARBAGALLO
Art work by Mike Kunkel.
All images copyright 2004 The Astonish Factory, Inc.
HEROBEAR AND THE KID
By RON BARBAGALLO
ARTICLE
Herobear and the Kid
By Ron Barbagallo - June 25, 2002
Ex -Disney animator Mike Kunkel made the best of every opportunity life handed him. First as an art student, then as an animator and now as a comic book artist/publisher who has sold the rights to his comic Herobear and the Kid to Universal. Herobear and the Kid looks at Kunkel and his art.
THE BACKGROUND ART OF
ARTICLE
The Background Art of Disney's Kim Possible
By Ron Barbagallo - June 2, 2002
Art director Alan Bodner and executive producer/director Chris Bailey discuss the inspiration and design process that went into creating the background art of Disney's Kim Possible.
By RON BARBAGALLO
© Disney Enterprises Inc.
DISNEY'S KIM POSSIBLE
DESIGNING
By RON BARBAGALLO
© Disney Enterprises Inc.
THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE
ARTICLE
Designing The Emperor's New Groove
By Ron Barbagallo - October 18, 2000
Disney’s 39th Animated Feature Film is previewed by taking a look at the production designs, background art and character designs that went into creating the mythical South American world of The Emperor’s New Groove. Director Mark Dindal, producer Randy Fullmer, art director Colin Stimpson and character designer Joe Moshier (who also created some of the art featured in the article) go into detail regarding how they began designing The Emperor's New Groove.
FINE ART REVIEW
ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG • Works on Metal
By Ron Barbagallo - November 16, 2014
Not new, actually decades old, the Works on Metal exhibition at the Gagosian Beverly Hills hosts a collection of Rauschenberg’s works created using metal components. Nostalgic, poetic, somber, formal and yet casual in the way they’re collaged, these works by Rauschenberg are from the 80s and 90s. Assembled by way of paint on metallic substrates, these works include urban vestiges and manufactured elements. The result feels worn and warm, and familiar and textured and spacial, and their influence on the Fine Art being made by other artists during the last ten years is obvious.
© Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG
By RON BARBAGALLO
WORKS ON METAL
INTERVIEW
Chuck Jones, in his own words
By Ron Barbagallo - the final version September 24, 2015
Over the course of his 89 years, Chuck Jones has seen animation grow from its beginnings through the heyday of the 1930s, ’40s and ‘50s, past its depths in the 1970s, and onto the renaissance in the 1990s. During that time, Jones has worked in nearly every capacity in the art form, leaving behind a body of work as a director of animation that boasts the only two Warner Bros. shorts included in the National Film Registry. I first met Chuck Jones in 1996, and later took the opportunity to interview him...
Photograph of Chuck Jones © Ron Barbagallo
By RON BARBAGALLO
CHUCK JONES, in his own words
from
the Lost and FOUND series
DOCUMENTARY REVIEW
Everything Is Copy, Nora Ephron: Scripted & Unscripted
By Ron Barbagallo - March 25, 2016
Everything Is Copy, Nora Ephron Scripted & Unscripted, is a documentary from her son, filmmaker Jacob Bernstein. Bernstein assembled home movies and interviews with family, friends and colleagues and put them into a film that honors life and legacy of essayist, novelist and filmmaker Nora Ephron.
Photographs © Elena Seibert
By RON BARBAGALLO
EVERYTHING IS COPY
Nora Ephron: Scripted & Unscripted
TV SERIES REVIEW
The 1 Reason Why I Endorse 13 Reasons Why
By Ron Barbagallo - May 12, 2017
13 Reasons Why is currently streaming on Netflix, and its subject matter takes on something as taboo as teenage suicide. It's adapted from the 2007 novel by Jay Asher and I recommend you binge-watch it with care. It has an appealing multi-cultural cast and is full of retro-Emo-styled music. It's set at a time in life which is full of hope. Its storytelling has its moments of drama and reveal. 13 Reasons Why is also more delicate than you might expect, and while it tries to entertain, it also does the unthinkable. — It informs.
© Netflix
By RON BARBAGALLO
THE 1 REASON WHY I ENDORSE
13 Reasons Why
FILM REVIEW
Behind the Phantom Threads
By Ron Barbagallo - March 3, 2018
Because at its very heart, the dress that Phantom Thread wears has nothing to do with the time period its set, or its beautiful couture. For all its alluring coloring and formal design, the film is an exotic bit of window dressing used to set a stage so PT Anderson can talk about something else - OBSESSION. Not just the obsession a woman has when she's trying to gain emotional completion from a man but the obsession a man can have for the bandage that is his work — and in ways that become less veiled where these obsessions collide and how they inspire. For these reasons, Phantom Thread is one of those films that will sit with you in different ways, and that's because it consciously uses one convention to draw you in so it can talk to you about something you won't expect...
© Focus Features (US) / Universal Pictures
By RON BARBAGALLO
PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON
Behind the Phantom Threads
COMMENTARY
For All The Money In The World
By Ron Barbagallo - March 8, 2018
All The Money In The World is director Ridley Scott's new biopic about J. Paul Getty and the relationship Getty had with his family versus the relationship he preferred to have with money and the empire he built. It warns on the perils of addiction. Not just the addiction to drugs, or the addiction to power and money. All the Money in the World also warns on — the addiction to oneself.
© TriStar Pictures
By RON BARBAGALLO
RIDLEY SCOTT
All The Money In The World
By RON BARBAGALLO
Image courtesy of the Nerbovig family.
DISCOVERING HELEN NERBOVIG
ARTICLE
Discovering Helen Nerbovig
By Ron Barbagallo - July 15, 1997
Discovering Helen Nerbovig is the second of two matching pieces which give long overdue credit to Guthrie Sayle Courvoisier and Helen Gertrude Nerbovig. Two visionaries: Helen who is sometimes credited with the creation of the first cel setup, and Guthrie, who conducted the first wide scale distribution of animation art. Courvoisier and Nerbovig’s efforts overlapped and eventually intersected. This article chronicles Helen’s individual contribution and life journey.
By RON BARBAGALLO
© Disney Enterprises Inc.
GUTHRIE SAYLE COURVOISIER
ARTICLE
Guthrie Sayle Courvoisier
By Ron Barbagallo - February 15, 1997
The first of two matching pieces designed to give long over due credit to Guthrie Sayle Courvoisier and Helen Gertrude Nerbovig. Two visionaries: Helen who is sometimes credited with the creation of the first cel setup and Guthrie who conducted the first wide scale distribution of animation art. Courvoisier and Nerbovig’s efforts overlapped and eventually intersected. This article chronicles Guthrie’s individual contribution.
INTERVIEW with INSIGHT, How the Animation Industry Works
By Ron Barbagallo - September 25, 2018
Brad Bird's Amazing Story,
from leaving Disney onto fixing The Iron Giant and the Road Less Traveled
"Well, when I realized that Disney was not going to be the place that I thought that it was, I had two alternatives. One was to quit animation and go into regular live action filmmaking, and the other was to make one last shot at doing the kind of projects I wanted to do in animation and see if I could get anyone interested in paying for it. I chose the latter. I took whatever money I had in the bank and I made a little sample film that I called A Portfolio of Projects..."
© Disney/Pixar
By RON BARBAGALLO
BRAD BIRD'S AMAZING STORY,
from leaving Disney
onto fixing The Iron Giant
and the Road Less Traveled
from
the Lost and FOUND series
REVIEW
Frank Lloyd Wright, and the five stages of Los Angeles
By Ron Barbagallo - November 6, 2018
Wright first visited Los Angeles in January 1915, less than six months after the tragedy at Taliesin, and he would move there full time in early 1923. Still reeling from the loss of his home and family, Wright would within this time frame build five houses in LA that are linked by their concrete uniqueness and their ironic inability to be a home fit for anyone or anyone's family. As a set of five, these five houses are different from the rest of Wright's body of work. They're harsh. Opaqued in one color. Crypt-like and Cold. Each stand like a fortress, with fists clenched and trembling, erupting from the spot where Frank Lloyd Wright anchored them. And, writer/director Christopher Hawthorne describes them as such in his insightful, well-written documentary for Artbound: That Far Corner.
Images courtesy of KCET
By RON BARBAGALLO
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT,
and the five stages of Los Angeles
INDEX OF SERVICES
The Ethical Method of Repair
The Attention is in the Details
the Lost and FOUND series
RON BARBAGALLO:
ARTISTIC DISCOVERY
By Ron Barbagallo - July 12, 2019
The Destino Animatic, and the Fate of Assembling Artistic Truths into a Greater Whole
As a follow up to his 2017 Society of Animation Studies Keynote speech at Padova University (Destino, and the Fate of Assembling Plastic Truths into a Greater Whole), Ron Barbagallo, the Director of The Research Library at Animation Art Conservation, offers a full analysis of his Destino Animatic in a peer reviewed essay in the SAS Journal for Animation History and Theory...
Artwork is from a private collection
By RON BARBAGALLO
The DESTINO Animatic,
and the Fate of Assembling Artistic Truths into
a Greater Whole
from
the Lost and FOUND series
REVIEW
THE END OF TOUR
By Ron Barbagallo - August 23, 2015
As far as summer movies go, The End of Tour is not going to get a lot of media attention. There will not be an aisle in Target devoted to its merchandising or a sequel made to further the franchise. This is because The End of Tour is an indie film, and in the realm of this type of movie, James Ponsoldt, who directed this work, hasn't reinvented the wheel. Rather, the film he's made glides politely down the genre’s center lane, providing a bit of an uneven ride as it chugs along on what is a literary path.
Image courtesy of A24 films
By RON BARBAGALLO
THE END OF TOUR
ESSAY
Here in the City of Angels
By Ron Barbagallo - May 24, 2020
The idea that the ego unbounded infests places that are not apparent is key to the Sherlock Holmes novel The Adventure of the Copper Beeches, and is key to understanding Chinatown, screenwriter Robert Towne's essay about Los Angeles. Towne observes that behind the smart fitted haute couture, sunshine and tropical palm trees, Los Angeles is a place made up of small pockets that are isolated from the whole. To illustrate how corrupt things can be in places where the public is too disconnected to see them, Towne relies on this — language.
© Paramount Pictures
By RON BARBAGALLO
HERE IN THE CITY OF ANGELS
