The idea that midcentury modern design is the foundation of the aesthetic style prevalent in films produced by United Productions of America (UPA) studio is not a novel concept. Several books explore the connection between UPA films and other design conventions of the midcentury modern era, including Adam Abraham’s When Magoo Flew, Amid Amidi’s Cartoon Modern, and SAS member Cinzia Bottoni’s Redesigning Animation. In Cartoon Vision: UPA Animation and Postwar Aesthetics (Univ. of California Press, 2019), however, author Dan Bashara offers a new angle by arguing that UPA style animation can be used as the lens through which we examine crosscurrents between different movements of visual culture in the post-World War II era. Specifically, Bashara thoroughly explores how consumers of both commercial products and fine art experienced visual culture, from prefabricated homes to modernist painting to animation.
The cover of Cartoon Vision by Dan Bashara, Univ. of California Press.
Cartoon Vision is organized into four main chapters: Postwar Precisionism: Order in American Modernist Art and Modern Cartoon, Unlimited Animation: Movement in Modern Architecture and the Modern Cartoon, Condensed Works: Communication in Graphic Design and the Modern Cartoon, and The Design Gaze: Cartoon Logic in Hollywood Cinema and the Avant-Garde Conclusion. Each chapter is focused on the connections between UPA style and one of its “fellow travelers” (6), a term that Bashara uses to describe various tenets of midcentury modern visual culture that seemingly generated responses to or from UPA productions. Although each section addresses a single genre (modernist painting, architecture, graphic design, and film), Bashara takes the reader on several illuminating detours into other disciplines, thereby broadening the focus of each chapter.
Cartoon Vision opens with a lucid description of the relationship between UPA animation and midcentury modern design. Throughout the following chapters, Bashara offers evidence of how UPA style reflects the motivation of many midcentury modern designers to reference more than one discipline in their work. Perhaps, conjuring up Terrytoons’ Heckle and Jeckle, Bashara playfully introduced the idea of “magpie modernism” (22) to describe the diversity of references the studio drew from. Discussing the aesthetics of UPA style and its influence on movie musicals, he writes that films from each genre “wink at each other from across the room” (168). Taking his readers through what at first may seem like a winding path through diverse elements of visual culture, Bashara grounds his arguments within the written work of György Kepes and László Moholy-Nagy, two prominent artists and scholars of the Bauhaus movement who clearly saw the potential of interdisciplinary art and design.
Building on this inherent modernist interdisciplinarity, in chapter 3, he introduces the concept of condensation. He writes that these different mediums are “linked by a common concern; how to render complex often theoretically advanced or esoteric ideas into a visible form that the layperson can understand, and how to do so in a way that is quick, efficient, and easily grasped regardless of divergent levels of literacy or education” (117). For example, he makes fascinating connections between UPA animation’s potential to condense with Freud’s use of dream work in psychoanalysis. In this section, he draws parallels between the role of condensation in UPA style, which he describes as the “render[ing] of complex, often theoretically advanced or esoteric ideas into a visible form that the layperson can understand” (117). This allows him to present UPA animation as reflecting concerns similar to those of other modernist art forms and developing alongside them, rather than as products of isolated and distinct artistic movements.
Later on, Bashara proposes the concept of ‘Design Gaze’ as a sense through which to understand the relationship between UPA Animation and other modernist works. Just as Laura Mulvey’s theory of the Male Gaze requires the viewer to question the motivation behind the depiction of women in a work of art, viewing films with an awareness of Design Gaze requires the viewer to question how to place UPA films in the broader context of midcentury modern visual culture. Reflecting this emphasis on interdisciplinary experimentation, readers may find themselves experiencing Bashara’s writing as they experience many UPA films; the narrative has been distilled down to striking, seemingly isolated fragments which eventually come together to create a compelling whole.
Cartoon Vision is an impressive display of extensive, meticulous research. However, Bashara’s accessible prose and skillful use of metaphor enable the reader to experience the wonder that animation is meant to evoke. Scholars and students will appreciate how Bashara avoids needlessly re-hashing other research about UPA style, while providing the context non-scholarly readers need to gain an understanding of an important era in animation history. Although Bashara’s analysis of the visual tenets of this design era relies on some familiarity with complex concepts and resources, his descriptions of post-war visual culture are well within reach of the general reader. Cartoon Vision: UPA Animation and Postwar Aesthetics adds to a growing body of literature on this fascinating topic, an accomplished synthesis of compelling questions and rigorous research. A delight to read, it deserves a spot on many mid-century modern bookshelves.
Kate Renner is an Assistant Professor of Visual Art at Vermont State University – Lyndon, where she teaches courses in Drawing, Animation, and 3D Modeling. She is also the Director of the Vermont Animation Festival.