Tyrus Wong: American Master

September 10, 2017

I find myself in tears having experienced the American Masters : Tyrus Wong docu on PBS.  It's about art and discrimination and humility and skill and love..  Loyalty and ideas.. concepts to share and those that keep us moving along... 

The first ever film I saw was Bambi.  I understand that it was my dad who took me to see it. I've wondered if it was just the two of us. Pretty brave for a dad to take a three year old.. if I was that old.. to sit for an hour and ten minutes all by himself with me.  I was profoundly taken by the film and it was not for many years that I understood that the entire 'flavor' of this film was because of the influence of Tyrus Wong.  

I'd found one of those big old coffee table books about Bambi that was signed by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas who are credited with much of the result as this famous Walt Disney film.  I tried to get Tyrus to autograph the book, but letters to his home and my not going to the beach at Santa Monica to button hole him when he went to fly his amazing kites is now on me as I reflect on his work and his family and his sense of humor that sustained him until his death at the age of 106 last December.  

All of the shoulda/woulda/couldas bubble to the surface now and then and watching this very well executed docu this afternoon, brings life full circle.  Of course, the theme of Felix Salten's story, now overshadowed by the Disney film, has to do with birth, life and death.  The beauty of Wong's artistry has now won him a plaque in the honor courtyard at the Disney Studios.  Well deserved.

I think my feeling of loss also turns on losing a friend: a beautiful woman who makes art.  Having seen some of her Chinese water colors, I was reminded of her few pieces I've seen when early water colors of Tyrus's showed up in the film.  It's a delicate technique that one trusts to skill and the luck of the day and the sweep of a particular brush to make an ethereal and ephemeral.. something. 

Very few people will understand the importance of these artful connections: My sorrow at never having thanked Mr. Wong in person for my first movie experience... it stays with me to this very day... never having flown a kite with him..  for some reason, that is particularly sad..  Not everyone understands the joy of kite flying.  For those who do, you might tear up a little, too, if you watch this American Masters docu and see the joy on this old artist's face as his home made dragon flies and other gorgeous strips of color take to the skies on the ocean breeze.

Missed opportunities.  Thirty years ago at MoCA finding exquisite beauty and missing the boat. What can counter that? Nothing, really. but... Knowing that there is, somewhere in the world.. something that creates a spirit like Mr. Wong, who tagged our world with beauty and humility ..  that's a comfort on its own.  

Find the docu, artists.. and others..  American Masters: Tyrus Wong.   

Michael Sheehan

September 10, 2017