No other film that Walt Disney ever made was quite as ambitious as Fantasia, both artistically and culturally. In it, the master of animation combined music and cartoon characters in ways no other artist had attempted before, bringing to its eight animated segments jollity, terror, and the rapture of an orchestra charging at full tilt—on top of ambitious, bold animation sequences like that danced liberally with color, pre-history, demonic iconography, and both metaphoric and literal magic. It provided decades of stoners with endlessly watchable background tape as much as it gave film scholars classroom discussion fodder, and, while its racist moments remain both flagrant and foul (no matter how Disney attempts to erase them), its whole is an unforgettably affecting work of art.
So it’s really flipping cool that this giant batch of Fantasia and other Disney art is up for auction right now. You may or may not (most likely not) be able to afford any of it, given that some of these will sell for about $50,000 a pop, but Heritage Auctions has a huge library you can scroll through right now to admire the handiwork of artists from the last 70 years of Disney animation.
In addition to the several Fantasia entries, a host of other Disney and other classic animation fare is on offer as well, from Lady and the Tramp, to The Black Cauldron, to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, to Robin Hood, to Scooby Doo and Super Friends, and more.
Have a look at the whole collection here, and a few of our favorites below. The auction ends July 1.
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