Gallery Interior with Missing Painting

In recent years the animated cartoon has experienced something of a renaissance. Full-length features show in cinemas and highly popular series appear on prime time TV. Despite the animated cartoon being the most universal art form of the 20th century, most "serious" artists and filmmakers have long regarded it as being a debased, commercialized form of their media, and it has been relegated to the status of a minor art form. Ironically, animation has actually had a strong influence on cinema, TV and video. Sergei Eisenstein was a huge Disney fan and was influenced by the qualities of animism he saw in cartoons. Split second timing and editing techniques developed in Warner Brothers cartoons of the 1940's anticipate the form of contemporary music videos, TV News, and advertisements.

Since the invention of animation at the turn of the century, cartoons have had strong links with the growth of consumer culture. As early as the 1920's Walt Disney developed product tie ins and branding to finance his ventures; many of the themes and narratives of cartoons follow the development and psychological effects of consumerism through the 20th century. Department stores and shops feature as recurrent backdrops. The Wily Coyote - Road Runner cartoons serve as a hilarious metaphor for the never-ending cycle of consumption and thwarted desires driven by consumer culture. Increasingly our surroundings seem to take on many of the qualities of cartoons, be it through the ''Disneyfication'' of inner sites, the increasing economic importance of the entertainment industry, or the way in which news has become "infotainment" and education "edutainment". Simultaneously, society is developing an increasing lust for suppression and punishment. Anarchic behavior juxtaposed with revenge and sadistic punishment is a common leitmotiv in cartoons. In my work I have adopted the aesthetics, conventions and working procedures of orthodox cartoon background painting, (a field in which I worked for several years), to create backgrounds for imaginary cartoons. Background artists employ very traditional painting and perspective techniques blended with, and simulating the spatial and visual effects of cinema. The resulting images occupy a peculiar territory in the visual arts as the illusionistic and fantastical commingle with the [supposed] realistic, direct, documentary conditions of film. Hence many backgrounds contain strange distortions and exaggerations of perspective; distortions that give the viewer the illusion of moving through space when the camera pans across the image. Cartoon backgrounds are inherently empty and stage like, often stripped down to the barest information necessary to describe a space through which characters are animated. This absence is interesting not only for its formal and metaphorical implications but because of the way in which it permits the viewer to inhabit the space with their own imagination, to become their own cartoon character.

Cartoons are usually produced by large teams of artists and designers all compelled to work in the same style. Inevitably the finished product is somewhat generic and homogenous in appearance. To maintain this quality in my own work I employ professional background designers to complete drawings from sketches I provide. I ask them to redesign the work in a pre-established style such as that of Warner Brothers of the 1940's, or contemporary Batman, etc, according to the theme of the work. I then produce large-scale paintings from these drawings. Through this process the trace of any individual author is greatly reduced. The work comes to possess the anonymous style of art made by committee, a kind of "Corporate Realism". It is animation's imbrication with consumer culture, its corporate mode of production, its role as a generator of simulacra and spectacle, and its odd condition as a sort of "outsider" mass medium, that makes it an interesting departure point for cultural critique, a means to represent the vacuity of extreme consumerism, the homogenization of contemporary culture, our neuroses, fears, obsessions and desires.

Text written by Philip Kitt

The artist wishes to thank the Conseil des arts et des letters du Quebec (CALQ) for its support in the realization of this project.