Background Artist
The Life and Work of Tyrus Wong
-
- $34.99
Publisher Description
You might not know the name Tyrus Wong, but you probably know some of the images he created, including scenes from the beloved Disney classic Bambi. Yet when he came to this country as a child, Tyrus was an illegal immigrant locked up in an offshore detention center. How did he go on to a long and prosperous career drawing animation cels, storyboards, and greeting cards that shaped the American imagination?
Background Artist shares the inspiring story of Tyrus Wong’s remarkable 106-year life and showcases his wide array of creative work, from the paintings and fine art prints he made working for Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration to the unique handmade kites he designed and flew on the Santa Monica beach. It tells how he came to the United States as a ten-year-old boy in 1920, at a time when the Chinese Exclusion Act barred him from legal citizenship. Yet it also shows how Wong found American communities that welcomed him and nurtured his artistic talent. Covering everything from his work as a studio sketch artist for Warner Bros. to the best-selling Christmas cards he designed for Hallmark and other greeting card companies, this book celebrates a multitalented Asian American artist and pioneer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Chinese-American animator Tyrus Wong (1910–2016) "shaped some of America's best-loved imagery," according to this scrupulous reconsideration from Fang (Arresting Cinema), an English professor at the University of Houston. After arriving in the U.S. in 1920 under a false identity created to circumvent the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, Fang joined his father in Los Angeles. He honed his artistic skills at California's Otis Art Institute and painted murals for the Federal Art Project before starting at Disney as an "in-betweener"—an artist enlisted to reproduce "endless minor variations in imagery needed to create the illusion of movement." Eventually, Wong became a lead artist on 1942's Bambi, using "Chinese-style brushwork" to depict landscapes that were evocative yet subdued enough for the film's "arduously developed" animal characters to stand out. Throughout, Fang reveals how Wong's career—which included a stint at Warner Bros., where he worked on such films as 1949's Sands of Iwo Jima—reflected the tension between visibility and invisibility experienced by many of the era's Asian immigrants, who shaped American culture in ways that were often overlooked or unseen (Wong was initially listed as a background artist in Bambi, for example). Nevertheless, Fang acknowledges that commercial art provided Wong with economic stability "well before" many of his Asian American contemporaries achieved it. The result is a worthy tribute to a groundbreaking artist.
