As Walt Disney proclaims in the featured audio clip from the famed Pete Martin interview, "[Ward Kimball] is a terrific artist. He gets a lot of feeling…and of course he has a terrific sense of humor about everything.” The range of Ward’s art was as limitless as his imagination. A virtual renaissance man, he tried his hand at everything from painting to sculpture. For 30 years he even regularly contributed an artistic column of sorts, known as “Asinine Alley,” to the magazine of the Horseless Carriage Club, the “Horseless Carriage Gazette.”
Some of Ward’s most impressive works are his portraits and figure paintings. Ward’s son John Kimball would remember to filmmaker Ted Thomas: “They used to have these art classes, and it wasn’t just people at Disney. One or two people from Disney would come but it would be artists who lived in the area… They would just call somebody or get somebody to come over and pose. Maybe when it first started it was once a week and then maybe once a month. Sometimes there’d be a jam session afterwards, kind of like a party. They just had a lot of fun…Even though he didn’t consider this artwork at all, I think this is some of his best work, his portraits.” Every imaginable type of character was the subject for such portrait, and each time Ward would seem to find some kind of unique perspective.
In 1964, at the age of 50, Ward published a book known affectionately as Art Afterpieces. Within, Ward humorously reinterpreted the classic masterpieces of art. The Mona Lisa with hair curlers, Whistler’s “Portrait of My Mother” watching television, the “Blue Boy” with glasses and a beard penned in? All in a day’s fun for Ward.
The book was available from Pocket Books Inc, for $1.50, and featured a foreword by artist Walt Kelly. Kelly was then famous for his comic-strip creation, Pogo, but 25 years earlier, Kelly had been a fellow animator and close friend of Ward’s at The Walt Disney Studios. Kelly left Disney as result of the animators' strike in 1941, but found lasting admiration for his comic art. In the foreword, he states, “For the fact of the matter is that Mr. Kimball is a master finisher. He finishes what others have started. Any bull can charge into a china shop, but the bull in this book ends the job.”
Perhaps some of the most entertaining and unique art of Ward’s was the annual Christmas card he made for nearly 30 years between the mid 1930’s and 1960’s. Historian Amid Amidi comments, “The cards reveal Ward’s artistic restlessness and continual search for new visual concepts. They also document the evolution of his drawing style during the mid-Forties from traditionally rounded cartoon forms to confidently stylized illustration.” Earlier cards are more cartoon-like, while the later designs are far more abstract, often utilizing more photographic techniques. They are all, however, incredibly funny and often satirical of cultural happenings in the world at the time or the life of the family itself.
John Canemaker's Walt Disney's Nine Old Men." />In the audio clip, the painting that Walt describes, known as “Sunday Morning,” can be seen in John Canemaker’s book Walt Disney’s Nine Old Men and the Art of Animation. As can be heard, it thoroughly entertains and interests Walt (enough for him to actually recall it in an interview). The piece is a fine example of Ward’s almost surrealist instincts, but always with a sense of humor and a fun outlook.
The permeation of Ward’s artistic sensibility is certainly visible in the films he produced for Disney in the 1950’s such as Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom (1953) and "Man in Space" (1955). Ward was never afraid to push the limits, even if they went against the Disney norms. His personal art certainly deserves more attention and interest.
Lucas O. Seastrom served as a volunteer for two years before joining the staff as a Museum Educator in late 2014. He is a writer, filmmaker, and historian. His Disney studies can be found here.
Sources
- Amidi, Amid. "23 Creative Christmas Cards by Disney Legend Ward Kimball." Cartoon Brew. N.p., 18 Dec. 2013. Web. Feb. 2015.
- Amidi, Amid. "365 Days of Ward Kimball." 365 Days of Ward Kimball. Tumblr, n.d. Web.
- Canemaker, John. "Ward Kimball." Walt Disney's Nine Old Men and the Art of Animation. New York: Disney Editions, 2001. 80-123. Print.
- Growing Up With the Nine Old Men. Dir. Theodore Thomas. Walt Disney Studios, 2013. Diamond Edition Peter Pan Blu-ray.
- Kimball, Ward. Art Afterpieces. New York: Pocket, 1964. Print.