Cartoon Vision: UPA Animation and Postwar Aesthetics

In Cartoon Vision Dan Bashara examines American animation alongside the modern design boom of the postwar era. Focusing especially on United Productions of America (UPA), a studio whose graphic, abstract style defined the postwar period, Bashara considers animation akin to a laboratory, exploring new models of vision and space alongside theorists and practitioners in other fields. The links—theoretical, historical, and aesthetic—between animators, architects, designers, artists, and filmmakers reveal a specific midcentury modernism that rigorously reimagined the senses. Cartoon Vision invokes the American Bauhaus legacy of László Moholy-Nagy and György Kepes and advocates for animation’s pivotal role in a utopian design project of retraining the public’s vision to better apprehend a rapidly changing modern world.

• | Author: Dan Bashara
• | Publisher: University Of California Press
• | Publication Date: Apr 02, 2019
• | Number of Pages: 296 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover
• | ISBN-10: 0520298136
• | ISBN-13: 9780520298132