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BUYING ORIGINAL
ANIMATION ART (Part One) |
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The
Hollywood cartoon studios kept very little of their original artwork.
The films were the final product and the drawings, preliminary and
final, the cels and so on were considered by-products, especially the
cels. Disney has almost all of its drawings going back to the 1920s, but
the cels were considered expendable. I remember once being in Frank
Thomas’ home looking out his kitchen window. He pointed to the little
hill out in back and remembered watching his son and his friends
spreading out cels of Mickey Mouse from FANTASIA on the hill and sliding
down on them. What else were they good for post- production anyway? After
“SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS” was released, museums asked for
original art from this masterpiece. Galleries sold cels and drawings in
1938 from that film and various short cartoons, notably “FERDINAND THE
BULL”. Courvoisier Galleries, which had the exclusive, continued to
market cels to galleries for Disney through most of the 1940s to a
dwindling market until interest, dampened by lackluster films of the
period, dried up. When
Disneyland opened in 1955, cels were sold in the Art Corner, where you
could also buy flipbooks, books on animation and the like. The cels were
sold for less than two dollars. You could buy cels from features such as
“LADY AND THE TRAMP” and those from cartoon shorts starring Donald
Duck, Chip and Dale, and even ones done for the “MICKEY MOUSE CLUB”.
You could order them by mail right into 1971 and they still cost less
than two dollars! I bought
them regularly and still have the receipts and some of the cels still
have their $l.69 price sticker on the reverse. When
Walt Disney World opened in 1971, I recall going through bins and bins
of cels, buying dozens of cels from “THE ARISTOCATS” which was their
latest release, for less than two dollars each! In 1973 Disney felt
there might be a newer upscale market and made an exclusive deal with
Circle Galleries to handle “ROBIN HOOD” cels, elegantly framed and
priced at $75-$100. This was a success and the animation art market
never looked back. I
can remember when there were only a dozen or so serious collectors and
we bought, sold and traded with one another. We all knew one another and
there was no big money involved. We were able to add dozens of pieces to
our collections each year. Today of course big pieces bring big bucks
and a few pieces have achieved sales of $250,000. The thought of adding
dozens a year to a collection is good for a laugh.
Today there are galleries specializing in animation art, and that
is where one has to be very careful when planning to buy. There is only two kinds of genuine animation art — Pre-production art such as inspirational sketches, model sheets, storyboards and the like, and production art consisting of backgrounds, animation drawings and cels. Other things may be called animation art, but they are not. There are limited edition cels, actually new cels made up to look like the original production cels of old and sericels, which have the cartoon image printed on acetate sheets instead of being painted onto them. These
look like actual production cels when framed under glass because they
are put onto acetate sheets. They are copies, reproductions all. This is
no different than taking an image of Bambi and reproducing it onto a
T-shirt or poster or collector’s plate. The act of reproducing a
cartoon image onto a sheet of acetate does not make it any different
from a T-shirt. It is a reproduction. |
I
remember in one week seeing for sale a limited edition of Aurora dancing
with Prince Philip from “SLEEPING BEAUTY”, recently inked and
painted (you can see rows of people painting them at Walt Disney World)
and in that same week receiving a list of animation production art for
sale which included virtually the same image—the original, the one and
only cel of that frame in the film. The reproduction was selling for
$2500, the original $3500. The difference was not that great, yet one
was an original, the other was a copy. The reproduction has value, and
is pretty, but is not genuine animation art. My
suggestion to anyone who wants a cel of Lady and Tramp eating spaghetti,
who does not have the funds to buy an original, is to make their own. If
you are a good artist, make your own. If not, hire someone. Your fake is
as good as Disney’s fake and it won’t cost you $2500. But why not
just buy a nice print of the scene in a poster shop, or buy an original
movie lobby card of the scene? Just because the scene is on acetate does
not make it anything special, worth charging thousands of dollars for. I
go into galleries and pretend to know nothing about animation art. I
have asked managers in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and even in
Canada if their limited editions are originals, are they the art that
was actually filmed long ago for the original movie. Not one ever told
me the truth. They all lied and said they were unique originals, even in
the Disneyland Hotel shop. Original production artwork is rare, and
every gallery has some for sale. But they all have the factory-produced
limited editions as well. They
could not stay in business if they did not also sell these limited
editions and the sericels. There would not be enough production art
alone to keep the business going, and so new buyers are tricked into
thinking they have made a substantial purchase when only the price they
have paid is substantial. By the way, limited editions are limited to
the number they think they can sell, of course, at the high prices. If
they think they can only sell 500 to the market, they’ll make an
edition of 500. Other runs are for more, sometimes many more. They are
not very “limited” in number, and certainly not in price. Better to
sell a few at horrendous prices than many at a reasonable price. And
so lesson number one is to only buy original production artwork. Buy
quality, not quantity. You may have to wait to find that one character
or one scene you most would like to have. Were the prices in line with
what they really are, reproductions could suffice until the real thing
came along, just as a Dali or Picasso print will do until we win the
lottery. But we knew a print for being what it was. No one was telling
us it was original artwork, or charging 75% of the cost of the original
artwork for a print. Next time I will offer some tips on buying original animation art. In the meantime if you would like to see some of the original animation artwork from the silent era to the television era I have bought, please visit my website at www.disada.com . Peter Adamakos is an animation producer and director who founded an animation company 31 years ago. Peter has also been a collector of original animation artwork for over 35 years. His collection has formed the basis of major museum exhibitions in cities like Montreal, New York, Toronto, Tampa, Paris, Atlanta, Brussels and many more. He also teaches in animation. Peter can be reached by e-mail at peter@disada.com or by snail mail at: Peter Adamakos
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