If you’ve seen the Disney animated classic Bambi, you’ve experienced the art of Tyrus Wong. An exhibition of his work opened Wednesday night at the Museum of Chinese in America. It’s titled Water to Paper, Paint to Sky: The Art of Tyrus Wong. Wong, who is 104 years old, attended the Chinatown event. We walked with him during his first look at the collection of his life’s work.
In 1919, nine-year-old Wong and his father emigrated from China. During the Great Depression, Wong painted murals for the Works Project Administration (WPA). In 1938, he landed a job at the Walt Disney Studios as an “inbetweener,” creating the “in-between” drawings that completed sequences between the animator’s key drawings.
Wong hated the tedious work. When the studio began work on Bambi, he hoped to get involved. “The story was very, very nice – the feeling – you can almost smell the pine,” Wong is quoted as saying in the exhibit catalog. The animators, who used the Disney style of extensive detail, found the animal characters were lost in the complicated forest backgrounds. Wong went home and created some sample Chinese-inspired sketches. “I tried to keep the thing very, very simple and create the atmosphere, the feeling of the forest,” he’s quoted as saying in Walt Disney’s Bambi: The Story and the Film.
Walt Disney liked how the animals stood out in Wong’s sketches. “I like that indefinite effect in the background – it’s effective,” Disney was quoted as saying. “I like it better than a bunch of junk behind them.”
In 1941, Wong moved to Warner Bros., where he painted concept art for live-action films that included Rebel Without a Cause and The Wild Bunch. Wong hardly slowed up after he retired in 1968. Today the centenarian enjoys building and flying elaborate Chinese kites in Santa Monica.
Click through our slideshow to see Wong’s work in a variety of media. Better than that, visit the Museum of Chinese in America to see the exhibition, up through September 13. The Museum, located at 215 Centre Street, is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 11am to 6pm and Thursday, 11am to 9pm. There’s free admission on the first Thursday of the month.
