It’s a Small World: Legendary, Childlike Disney Cartoon & Theme Park Artist Mary Blair Honored on Google’s Homepage for Her 100th Birthday (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on October 21, 2011
Innovative, talented Disney artist Mary Blair is honored today, on what would have been her 100th birthday, on Google’s homepage. Blair’s groundbreaking artwork and creative character designs have influenced generations of artists. The doodle artwork that graces the Google homepage imitates Blair’s endearing, distinctive style that so many people around the world associate with “classic Disney.”
Her influence is in countless Disney short and feature-length animations, most notably Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan, as well as murals in Tomorrowland and the 1960s ride “It’s a Small World” at Disneyland in California and other Disney parks.
Born October 21, 1911, Blair passed away in 1978.
Undated photo of Disney artist Mary Blair
Brief bio on Blair from Wikipedia:
Mary Blair (October 21, 1911 – July 26, 1978), born Mary Robinson, was an American artist who was prominent in producing art and animation for The Walt Disney Company, drawing concept art for such films as Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Song of the South and Cinderella. Blair also created character designs for enduring attractions such as Disneyland’s It’s a Small World, the fiesta scene in El Rio del Tiempo in the Mexico pavilion in Epcot’s World Showcase, and an enormous mosaic inside Disney’s Contemporary Resort. Several of her illustrated children’s books from the 1950s remain in print, such as I Can Fly by Ruth Krauss. Blair was honored as a Disney Legend in 1991.
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While the fine art she created outside of her association with Disney and her work as an illustrator is not widely known to the public, Blair’s bold and ground-breaking color design still serves as an inspiration to many of today’s contemporary designers and animators. A doodle was created by Google on Friday, 21 October 2011, to commemorate her centennial anniversary. The Doodle featured an image of an illustrator as Mary would have drawn herself, surrounded by the simple patterns and shapes that made up her familiar cartoon world.
This first video is a 2009 Christmas ad, created in Mary Blair’s style, for Mastercard.
“Full House,” Mastercard Xmas Commercial | Christmas 2009
Montage: The Art of Mary Blair (no audio)
From the Disney website:
An imaginative color stylist and designer, Mary Blair helped introduce modern art to Walt Disney and his Studio, and for nearly 30 years, he touted her inspirational work for his films and theme parks alike. Animator Marc Davis, who put Mary’s exciting use of color on a par with Matisse, recalled, “She brought modern art to Walt in a way that no one else did. He was so excited about her work.”
Animator Frank Thomas added, “Mary was the first artist I knew of to have different shades of red next to each other. You just didn’t do that! But Mary made it work.”
Walt connected with Mary’s fresh, childlike art style. As Disney Imagineering artist Roland Crump once told animation historian John Canemaker, “The way she (Mary) painted – in a lot of ways she was still a little girl. Walt was like that… You could see he could relate to children – she was the same way.”
Born in McAlester, Oklahoma, in 1911, the inherently gifted artist won a scholarship to Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. After graduation in 1933, at the height of the Depression, Mary took a job in the animation unit of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) rather than pursue her dream of a fine arts career.
In 1940, she joined The Walt Disney Studios and worked on a number of projects, including the never-produced “Baby Ballet,” part of a proposed second version of “Fantasia.” (Walt’s original idea was to periodically re-release “Fantasia” with new sequences.)
In 1941, she joined the Disney expedition that toured South America for three months and painted watercolors that so captured the spirit of the Latin countries that she was named art supervisor on “The Three Caballeros” and “Saludos Amigos.” Mary’s unique color and styling greatly influenced such Disney postwar productions as “Song of the South,” “Make Mine Music,” “Melody Time,” “So Dear to My Heart,” “The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad,” “Cinderella,” “Alice in Wonderland,” and “Peter Pan.” She also contributed to special shorts, including “The Little House” and “Susie, the Little Blue Coupe.”
H/t to the Boing Boing website for posting this fabulous 1955 Mary Blair calendar graphic:
1955 Meadow Gold calendar with Mary Blair's artwork | Credit: Dan Goodsell, Flickr, via Boing Boing website
Cover of 1951 children's book 'I Can Fly,' illustrated by Mary Blair
From Los Angeles Times, Mary Blair Google Doodle: Academy honors ‘Mary Blair’s World of Color’:
Mary Blair, honored Friday with a Google Doodle, is the woman to thank for the Disneyland boat ride It’s a Small World.
Blair’s doodle coincides with a Los Angeles tribute to the longtime Disney artist. Thursday night, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hosts “Mary Blair’s World of Color — A Centennial Tribute” to celebrate the woman, born a century ago, who made a place for herself among Disney’s famous founding animators, the Nine Old Men.
The Los Angeles Times’ Susan King, a writer and expert on classic Hollywood, reported Monday on the coming tribute and says Blair is best known for her contributions to the 1950 animated “Cinderella,” 1951′s “Alice in Wonderland” and 1953′s “Peter Pan” — as well as the aforementioned design for It’s a Small World.
Blair, who followed her animator husband, Lee Blair, to the Disney studio in 1940, was greatly admired by boss Walt Disney, who requested her work on It’s a Small World.
Visitors to Anaheim’s Disneyland of old might remember murals by Blair that decorated Tomorrowland. Those have fallen by the wayside in remodels over the years. Reaction to the 1986 removal of tiles bearing her artwork continues years later. Comments on a YouTube site showing the removal include: “I know disneyland needs to change but still … mary blair is like the ’2nd walt disney’ … disneyland, u failed.”
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