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artist who ever lived. He produced everything at top speed. By
1900 he was turning out a painting every morning and doing
other things in the afternoon. He tried sculpture, facial masks,
and symbolism among other forms of expression and from then,
until his death at age 92, he remained a master of spectacular output, working on paper and canvas, in stone, ceramics,
and metal, in every possible variety of mixed media. He also
designed posters, advertisements, theater sets and costumes,
dresses, logos, and almost every kind of object from ashtrays to
headdresses. The number of his creations exceeds 30,000, and
although there is a 33-volume catalog raisonne (1932-1978), it
is far from complete and had to be supplemented by 10 other
catalogs. In the 20th century, more words were written about
Picasso than any other artist. Picasso was a millionaire by 1914
and a multimillionaire by 1918. By the time of his death, he was
by far the richest artist who ever lived. His work was divided into
chronologic periods, variously termed the blue period, the rose
period, the primitive period, cubism, classicism, and surrealism,
and his last featured particular models-minotaur, variations
of the old masters, bullﬁghts, and cruciﬁxions.
Walt Disney (1901-1966): Disney's childhood was spent
on a farm in rural Missouri, and he delighted all his life in
observing and drawing animals. Their movements and idiosyncrasies gave him great pleasure. In contrast to Picasso, who
tended to dehumanize the women he drew or painted, Disney,
accorded to Johnson, anthropomorphized his animal subjects
that were the essential source of his power and humor. When
the farm failed, the family moved to Kansas City and his father
started a newspaper distributing business. By age 18, Disney was
making his living as a newspaper cartoonist. By age 20, he had
his own company and wanted to get into animation. He always
felt that animation without sound was dead and that the nature
and quality of sound was the key to success.
Disney started with short animation ﬁlms, plus photography
ﬁlms and advertising shorts using cartoon ﬁlms. He invented a
rabbit called Oswald who was all cartoon with long ears, long
feet, and a little knob of a tail. Live action in real people was
not used. He developed Mickey Mouse in 1928. In 1933, the
year of his greatest popularity, he received >800,000 fan letters, the largest ever recorded in show business at any time of
any century. Disney's genius was that he could make people,
especially children, love his creations. His drawing success was
extremely complex. He used, for example, 16 drawings to make
Mickey Mouse move once. Later, a team of animators drew the
key moves, following Disney's own sketches. About 14,000
drawings went into a 10-minute cartoon short. Sound arrived
in 1927, and he introduced a metronome, then drew the notes
on blank music sheets to produce a sound score. The cartoon
animation and the sound eﬀects could thus be synchronized.
The ﬁrst sound movie using the mouse was called Steamboat
Willie and was shown in 1928. It was a huge success, not only
because of Disney's technical triumph of synchronized animation, but because of the ingenuity of what Disney got the mouse
to do in producing noises. Therein lay his extraordinary gift,
the imagination to enter into the head of a half-mouse, halfman and devise weird and hilarious things to do as the mouse
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steered a boat down the river. Thus, Disney invented the sound
cartoon, a combination of imaginative drawing, scripting, and
engineering science. It was, and remains, a wonderful example
of creativity-the birth of a new art form. By the end of the
1920s, Mickey Mouse was the best known ﬁgure in movies. His
voice was originally done by Disney himself.
Other characters devised by Disney soon appeared: Minnie
Mouse, Figaro the Kitten, Chip the Chipmunk, Pluto, Goofy,
and Donald Duck. Disney devised the infuriated animation of
Donald to synchronize with irascible quacking noises. This was
the ﬁrst time in the history of art that drawings had not only
been animated but vocalized. Disney spent money as fast as it
came in. He insisted on reanimation, however time-consuming
and expensive, until the results were right. Disney always put
excellence before any other consideration.
The arrival of color, the improvement of background
technique, the perfection of the soundtrack, the inclusion of
high-quality orchestral music and singing, and ﬁnancial factors
persuaded Disney to break out of the funny cartoon and make
feature-length fairy tales. The ﬁrst one, Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs, was shown in cinemas all over the world in 1938.
The success of Snow White ﬁnanced a series of four big feature
movies between 1938 and 1944: Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo,
and Bambi. All were successful. He eventually turned to ﬁlming
nature itself, living but unanimated. His last years and after his
death, the studio continued to make major all-animated movies,
following his focus on nature. The inﬂuence of Disney on the
presentation of visual images in the 20th century and beyond
was immense.
There are no physicians or scientists among Johnson's "creators."

William Clifford Roberts, MD
August 10, 2017
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings October 2017