Film
After Walt Disney's death, it fell to Wolfgang Reitherman (one of the legendary Nine) to lead the Studios down the same path of more or less anthropomorphised animal protagonists. The Aristocats was the first to be made after the founder's death, but his imprint is still present, as the project was approved by Walt Disney himself a few years earlier. The film tells the story of a family of aristocratic cats, future heirs and inhabitants of the luxurious home of the elderly Madame Adelaide. Jealous of the cats and intent on becoming the sole heir to Madame's fortune, the butler Edgar captures them and removes them from their mansion to take their place in the will. Helping them to return home and regain their right will be the stray Romeo (er mejo der Colosseo) together with other animals from the Parisian slums. Perhaps not a particularly innovative film, but with a fresh and flowing storytelling, typical of the best Disney fiction.
Art
One of the kittens featured in the film, little Matisse, immediately shows brilliant painting skills. He could not be less, considering his name as a tribute to the famous Henri Matisse, one of the most famous artists of the 20th century and a leading exponent of the Fauve artistic current. Like him, the kitten chooses bright and symbolic colours, violent, often dissonant and without regard for the subject's natural colour. At the beginning of the film, we see him practising his portraiture, in particular we see him sketching the features of the butler Edgar in a way that is completely unnatural because of his choice of colours, mostly related to the emotional sphere. The face is green, the silhouette purple: two colours that animators have always reserved for antagonists, for villains, underlining how the kitten negatively perceives the figure of the butler. A choice in line with the painter who gave him his name, whose portraits present decidedly expressionist colour choices.
The ginger kitten's name, however, was not always this one. In fact, in the original language it is called not Matisse, but Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, paying homage to another great artist of the same years. As chance (or perhaps ingenuity) would have it, he too painted a portrait of a man with a bow tie, but very far from being his butler: what Toulouse-Lautrec portrayed was none other than the writer and poet Oscar Wilde. The painting dates from 1895 and is in the Lester Collection in California. In the critical and philological apparatus by G.M. Sugana, we read:
The effigy had met the painter in Paris, but refused to pose for him. This effigy was executed as a memorial on the occasion of the trial that condemned the writer in London; a vague hint of the Thames can be seen in the background. Taken from a pen drawing published in the 'Revue Blanche' in May 1895 and in an 1896 theatre programme. Signed at lower left.
External Links
Watch The Aristocats on Disney +
Paintings:
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