The Art of Claude Coats

Last year when Disney Editions released Jeff Kurtti's otherwise very enjoyable Walt Disney's Legends of Imagineering book, my chief objection - besides the puzzling exclusion of some pretty big names (saving them for a second installment, hopefully), was the lack of a complete "Imagineerography" for each person profiled, a hugely important task which I'm not sure even anyone at Disney has successfully completed. Although the book was not as hardcore authoritative as I would've liked, it is a good start for those perhaps just starting to dip their toes into the sticky world of theme park designers, and thankfully is not another Picture Book. I still highly recommend it.

One of my top designers from the Mouse factory is Claude Coats, whose evocative backgrounds created such extraordinary depth and interest in Disney product through the 1960's, and who, along with Ken Anderson, was perhaps most instrumental in inventing the mode of the "false space" which Disneyland attractions convey so richly. However, like many skilled artists at Disney, his work outside the "mouse house" has been difficult to see. Until now.

Coats' mastery of atmosphere: the ghoulish house, the lonely figure, the windswept trees... naturalism and a haunted atmosphere in one.

Coats' estate has put up a very exciting website which includes not only a full filmography and, thank god, Imagineerography, but for the first time some of Coats' non-Disney art available for viewing or purchase. Like Marc Davis' remarkable Indonesian paintings or figure studies, Coats' fine art pieces show a side of a vibrant artist which is very excitingly new but very much part of his creative vision. Coats' theme park works obsessively repeat a mastery of line and shape especially as relating to perspective, in his remarkable If You Had Wings, where forced perspective buildings were slanted every which way, or in his concepts for the Haunted Mansion, with endless halls and black voids.

"Kara Mon Gate", at left, strikes me as an especially striking enunciation of his interests in perspective, here where a wide shot of an architectural feature is painted to look graphically flat, and the road leading there is so dismissed of perspective that it becomes more of a bold shape than a feature of a naturally realized landscape. Strikingly different is "Ole", below, which has rich depth but which is strikingly pushed to the very margins of the piece. The focus is here on the wall posters and my mind immediatley goes to Coats' mastery of the significant detail to make the scene in Pirates of the Caribbean. His more abstract side may be seen in the strikingly forceful graphic expression of "Night / Day", at the top of the article.

Coats strikes me as one of the most significant of the WED pioneers and it's great to have a resource available online about his work overall rather than just relating to Disney. Stop by and take a look around; it's a rare opportunity to become more acquainted with one of the more remarkable talents who was working at Mr. Disney's studio.

http://claudecoats.com/