About the Painting 1
Diagram showing dimensions
of "The EuroDisney Triptych"
Dimensions in cm/inches
 

The EuroDisney Triptych was completed in January 1998 and first exhibited at the Louis K. Meisel Gallery in New York 4 December 1999 to 15 January 2000. It was made on Strathmore illustration board, using ink and a mixture of Winsor and Newton watercolors and Liquitex acrylic medium, which also serves as the final varnish.

The painting is an elaborate comment on the juggernaut of American popular culture that's homogenizing the world. The EuroDisney theme park (so close to Paris, the last citadel of European civilization) is the perfect symbol for this phenomenon. The painting shows the park being destroyed by a huge crowd of violent demonstrators.

  Detail from left side of left panel
Detail from left side of left panel
Detail from right side of left panel
Detail from right side of left panel
  The structure of the painting is like that of a comic strip, moving chronologically from left to right, the action becoming more and more violent. The style reflects this change and turns gradually from a 1930s newspaper-cartoon style on the left to a more realistic style in the center to an expressionist-cubist style on the right.

The demonstrators bring with them signs, floats, and giant balloons that grotesquely parody the Disney images. Ultimately, the demonstrators prove themselves more imaginative and relevant than the designers of the park.

The theme of the painting is not an attack on Disney. (The Artist has said that between 1926 and 1941 Walt Disney was one of the world's most creative people.) Instead, it's a challenge to Europe and the rest of the world, not to put up barriers to keep out American popular culture, but to create and update their own.

About the Painting 2

  Detail from center panel
Detail from center panel

Contents