The World of Pisney
“History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past. Consequently fear of the present leads to mystification of the past” ― John Berger, Ways of Seeing
The World of Pisney attempts to demystify the past.. and acknowledge the pervasive art forms and influences of the present. The present is by its nature evasive precisely because it lacks perspective. Hence, Pisney blurs the dividing line between the past and the present, and between two distinct cultural icons, Picasso and Disney, echoing contemporary society in which pop culture and art icons collide within the market place of commodities.
Cartoon imagery consumes everything within its plastic visual language, as did Picasso – reinventing the world in his vision. Pisney represents this amalgam, this cultural compression of high and low, of art and pop culture. Cartoon images often have no literal sense, but work visually. A Picasso deconstruction works in the same way. His language reinvents reality, twists and distorts it, but it succeeds because of its visual harmony even when we are faced with surreal juxtapositions. Picasso constantly adapted his style to keep up with his vision of the world, making it difficult to separate his medium from his message.
We steady our steps into the future by keeping sight of the past. Picasso was a sign post, a cultural marker for a new direction and perspective on representation. Disney is many things…and certainly much more than cartoon characters and a logo. It’s a lifestyle, a soft power ambassador for the American dream. It creates stories, and merchandise and theme parks which in turn feed the Disney machine. It sells a fiction as a reality. Welcome to Disneyworld.
We live in a time where action films are based on toy figures, (rather than toy figures based of film characters), and we communicate in a reduced lexicon of emoticons. Culture is imploding, feeding upon itself, and Pisney reflects this trend. Merging past and present is like using a compass in a forest, to mark our direction when no horizon is in sight. You are therefore invited into the inner world of Dora Mouse… and to question whether indeed she has one…