Watch Me Move is absorbing and thrilling
Since its emergence around 130 years ago, animation has adopted a bewildering array of forms.
The Barbican's enormous and excellent survey brings many of its incarnations together, taking us from the earliest photographic experiments and forays into stop-motion techniques to the latest in CGI technology. It is partly a story, then, of technological advances but principally Watch Me Move argues that animation's crucial component is imagination: the vision of animators, from the teams behind blockbusters such as Toy Story, to Japanese animé stylists, to the maverick contemporary artists, makes the discipline enduringly vibrant.
A presentation of more than 100 films or animated sequences could be deadly dull but the show's design, by Berlin-based Chezweitz and Roseapple, while arch, and at times confusing, gives the exhibition a dynamic flow. Double-sided screens hang on curtains, booths feature directional speakers to prevent too much cacophony, and a central room contains huge screens and loungers with headphones.
A thematic approach means recent creations are often placed right next to the earliest works. The formative experiments of Étienne-Jules Marey in the 1880s presented human movement in a way that must have seemed miraculous at the time, and this capacity to astound becomes the driving force of animation, whether in the service of dreamlike, spectral or slapstick visions. There are wonderful examples of Walt Disney genius, from a Skeleton Dance of 1929, to a sequence from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), whose luminous painterliness is emphasised in the company of the recent Disney and Pixar efforts. Less commercial works provide some of the best moments.
Swede Nathalie Djurberg' s films are brilliantly absurd: in one, an obese woman gives birth to a rhino, while her companion defecates a baboon. The Brothers Quay's In Absentia (2000) is a chilling evocation of madness, while Kara Walker uses clunky shadow puppetry to tell a shocking tale of racial violence in post-slavery America. The show's curators admit that viewers cannot be expected to see everything in depth, but you should give yourself at least a couple of hours to see this absorbing and at times thrilling show.
Until Sep 11 (0845 120 7550, barbican.org.uk)
