LITTLE DAVID IN MOMALAND. Thursday night I followed my own advice and went to MOMA to watch some "motion pictures." Attack of the Mushroom People was sorta scary fun in its weird mycological way, but the very, very special event was John Canemaker's presentation about the ingenious Winsor McCay. Speaking in front of a fortunate full house audience, Canemaker delivered a mellifluously intoned overview of McCay's career and screened several of McCay's animated and live/animated films, including How a Mosquito Operates (1912), Gertie (1914), and The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918).

Once upon a time, when McCay screened the cute dinosaur cartoon Gertie in his vaudeville act, he would pretend to interact with the projections. Canemaker's approximation of how that worked made me want to see it completely recreated. I wonder if the folks at Monday Night Magic or some New Vaudeville people or some local movie folk or the movie programmers at Ocean Grove's Great Auditorium would be interested in trying such a thing. Heck, I'd even like to see it projected dinosaur-size at the Ziegfeld. Anyway, some of McCay's work remains problematic in that he sometimes drew ethnic caricatures and, from a historical perspective, wasn't exactly balanced in his (blatantly jingoistic) account of the Lusitania attack (which comes across vividly as the 9/11 of its era), but his early grasp of cartooning capabilities is awe-inspiring and the work we glimpsed was extremely imaginative and mainly delightful.

After the screening, Canemaker signed copies of his book Winsor McCay: His Life and Art, which includes an introduction by Maurice Sendak. Here's a review and here's a summary. (Canemaker also provides commentary on the DVD Winsor McCay: The Master Edition.)

























A Footnote This week's Village Voice offers some criticism of MOMA. I could surely add to it, but for now I'd like to congratulate the museum's staff on doing something that, like the recent appearance of Ross McElwee with Charleen Swansea, was just right.


Image of Little Nemo from slumberland.org

Photos: David Marc Fischer